Simpson Shadehouse - Adelaide Botanic Gardens

Simpson Shadehouse - Adelaide Botanic Gardens

30 January 2014

Correa 'Tucker Time Dinner Bells'























It's very hot at present in South Australia with temperatures in the high thirties to low 40s but one pleasant surprise is that some correas have commenced flowering.  Correas are much loved by small birds whose beaks have evolved to be inserted in the long correa flowers - eastern spinebills in particular.  Besides Eastern Spinebills, I've noticed Silvereyes, New Holland honeyeaters, Grey wrens and Superb Fairy wrens enjoying the correa bushes.  This particular correa is a named and registered cultivar called Correa Tucker Time Dinner Bells.  It's a hybrid of Correa glabra x decumbens.  Decumbens is a prostrate correa so this cultivar must have taken on more of the flowering characteristics of that species and the bushy and shiny leaf characteristics of Correa glabra.  It's a very hardy correa which seems to have low water requirements and is quite showy even without flowers because of its shiny leaves.  It can grow to about 1.5 metres but it can be trimmed back and a group of them would form a very attractive native hedge which would be a real honey-eater magnet!  It can be grown from cuttings.

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