I found it almost impossible to choose a plant to feature this week, as there are just so many species looking absolutely spectacular around the region. Wildflowers are still doing wonderfully in areas such as Maddens Plains, Sublime Point, Robertson's Lookout and Barren Grounds. And around town, many urban trees, shrubs and plants are blooming their heads off.
But there's one plant, a small local tree, that puts on an incredible display for only a short time each year, and it's happening right now! Yes, I'm talking about the Snow-in-Summer (or Melaleuca linariifolia), which is the smallest of the local paperbark trees (though there are some shrubs that are smaller).
It's a gnarly, often quite stout small tree, with the classic papery bark layers of paperbark species, and a dense canopy of fine, almost green-grey or even blue-grey foliage. Its crowning glory, though, is its flowers, and in a good year a tree can appear to be covered in a blanket of snow (admittedly rather fluffy, perhaps ever so slightly yellowish, and very fragrant snow).
This species was much planted as a street tree in the area throughout the 'native tree' heyday of the 1970s, and this particular specimen is on the lower foothills of the escarpment.
In its natural habitat, Snow-in-Summer grows in damp and even waterlogged conditions on the Illawarra coastal plain, and would once have been common before massive changes such as constraining creeks to narrow channels and fill in wetland areas. It can still be seen in areas such as Blackbutt Reserve in Blackbutt, and at Bellambi lagoon, where it is also flowering well.
A look at the flowers reveals that they are like those of bottlebrushes, a compound inflorescence made up of many individual flowers bunched closely together. They are very popular with local birds, bees and other insects.
If you have a pocket of garden or nearby park that's looking grey or brown, a Snow-in-Summer might be a way to make positive change. They're fairly fast-growing when young so will make a different quite quickly.
