My home state of Victoria (Australia) has won a Gold medal for it's show garden at this years show. Out of 5 entries by this local firm [home turf in the next valley from me] they have won 3 gold and 2 silver in 5 years. No wonder they call us the Garden State. Each time they use a different designer and for the first time ever they were all Australian plants and the stone material for the curving wall came all the way from the Kimberlys in Western Australia. The plantings included a huge "Macrozamia moorei " which apparently Prince Philip refered to as a tree fern and was corrected I asume politley by the designer that it was not but a Macrozamia. He made some reply as he turned away that he did not come for a lesson. http://www.rhs.org.uk/chelsea/2008/show/flemings-and-trailfinders.asp Half way down page. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ea-Flower-Show-told-hed-got-plants-wrong.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrozamia_moorei Liz
Congrats Liz for your state, city and country. Beautiful plant, in what environment does it grow naturally? The Chelsea crew must have some good stories about moving the display? Tho' Philip is living up to his rep I'd rather the reporter did those stories - will I be flamed by saying : Brit papers, lowest common denominator feeding.
http://palm-trees.org/1007/Macrozamia_moorei.shtml http://www.pacsoa.org.au/cycads/Macrozamia/moorei.html Here you go. I will admit I know next to nothing re this as I live very much south and this is not a normal plant around here. Liz
More info: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/cycadpg?taxname=Macrozamia+moorei http://www.conifers.org/za/ma/moorei.htm And a pic of a mature specimen: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Macrozamia_moorei01.jpg But you've made far more effort to learn than a certain Royal!! ;-)
Boy looking at the age these things get to the one at the show must have been a fair few years. "Plants have grown to 2 m tall from seed in less than 100 years. Plants cone in about 50 years (Jones 1993). Since plants 8 m tall are known, extrapolation would suggest that ages may exceed 400 years. " Liz
Thanks LIZ and MichaelF for info; that must be an extraordinary trail in the Nat. Park to have two such sentinals. What a window on the natural world this site is!
