Parrot Bush is a beautiful plant flowering now in bushland across Perth. I always think the flowers seem like they open with a loud pop! This prickly shrub grows as far north as Geraldton and into the southwest to Albany.
Parrot Bush
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Tag Archives: Dryandra
What’s in a name?
This article was first published in the Wildflower Society of WA newsletter, August 2008. Photos by Clare Snow.
You don’t have to call Dryandra Banksia
by Alex George
In 2007 Austin Mast and Kevin Thiele published a paper combining the genus Dryandra with Banksia, with a further paper in 2008 covering names that they missed in the 2007 paper. The Western Australian Herbarium has now renamed its specimens of Dryandra, the Australian herbaria have adopted the change for their national plant census, and Kevin Thiele has been “marketing” the change to the community. For example, an article on the Department of Environment and Conservation’s website, repeated in the Department’s newsletter Western Wildlife, seeks to explain this change to a wider audience.
Having studied these plants for almost 50 years I am concerned that this change is premature, probably wrong, and is having a profound effect on those using the names of these plants, effects that could have been avoided.
Ockham's Razor 