SHOWY PARROT PEA | Dillwynia sericea

This is a photo I took out on my bush block in Western Victoria, Australia of a small native shrub called 'Dillwynia sericea'.

It's pronounced: dil-win-i-u sir-ece-e-u. Try saying that three times fast!

I am lucky enough that we have remnant bush with a great collection of wild flowers that have been relatively undisturbed, unlike a lot of the land around our area.

The individual flowers on this native pea are smaller than the size of a thumb nail. It is a low growing small shrub that only gets to about 1m high in the wild and flowers through spring and summer. In cultivation, they can grow a larger.

They are a tough little plant, coping on poor, impoverished soils with very low rainfall (we only get around 250 to 350mm rainfall a year) and extreme tempratures from -7C in winter to 45C in summer. The only thing they don't tolerate very well is being waterlogged.

Where this is growing on my block is on a very sandy, well drained area in among native grasses and other herbaceous wildflowers. It is a stunning sight to see when the Native Bluebells Wahlenbergia stricta are also flowering

Happy Gardening
Jody