Painted featherflower facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Painted featherflower |
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| Verticordia picta growing near Binnu | |
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| Scientific classification | |
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Verticordia
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| Species: |
picta
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The Verticordia picta, also called the painted featherflower or china cups, is a beautiful flowering plant. It belongs to the myrtle family, called Myrtaceae. This plant only grows naturally in the south-west part of Western Australia. It's a small to medium-sized bush with lovely pink, cup-shaped flowers that smell sweet.
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What the Painted Featherflower Looks Like
The Verticordia picta is a shrub that can grow from about 0.15 to 1.3 meters (0.5 to 4.3 feet) tall and wide. Unlike some similar plants, it doesn't have a special woody lump called a lignotuber at its base. However, it often branches out close to the ground, which can make it look like it has one.
This plant can look a bit different from one bush to another. Usually, it has one main stem at the bottom with a few branches growing from its sides. Its leaves are long and thin, shaped like a half-circle. They are about 4 to 12 millimeters (0.16 to 0.47 inches) long and have a pointy, sometimes hooked, tip.
The Flowers
The flowers of the painted featherflower have a sweet scent. They grow in round or flat-topped groups. Each flower sits on a small stalk that is about 7 to 14 millimeters (0.28 to 0.55 inches) long.
The part of the flower that holds everything together, called the floral cup, looks like half a sphere. It's about 2 millimeters (0.08 inches) long and feels smooth. The sepals, which are like small leaves protecting the bud, are usually pink, but sometimes they can be white. They are about 5 millimeters (0.20 inches) long and spread out. Each sepal has 6 to 10 feathery parts.
The petals are similar in color to the sepals and also spread out. They are almost round and measure about 4.5 to 8 millimeters (0.18 to 0.31 inches) long. The style, which is part of the female reproductive organ, is straight and quite thick. It's about 3 to 4 millimeters (0.12 to 0.16 inches) long and has tiny hairs near its tip. These beautiful flowers bloom from August to November.
How it Got its Name
The Verticordia picta was one of the first Verticordia plants to be officially described. A scientist named Stephan Endlicher wrote about it in 1838. He used a plant sample collected by John Septimus Roe, though no one knows exactly where that sample was found. The description was published in a book called Stirpium Australasicarum Herbarii Hugeliani Decades Tres.
The second part of its scientific name, picta, comes from a Latin word meaning "painted" or "colored." This might refer to small spots that appear on the plant when it's dried.
Modern Classification
In 1991, a botanist named Alex George studied the Verticordia group of plants very closely. He placed the painted featherflower into a smaller group called subgenus Eperephes, and then into an even smaller group called section Integripetala. Other plants in this section include V. rennieana, V. interioris, V. mirabilis, and V. helmsii. Alex George also found that another plant described in 1847 by Nikolai Turczaninow, called Verticordia pentandra, was actually the same as Verticordia picta. This means Verticordia pentandra is a synonym, or another name for the same plant.
Where the Painted Featherflower Grows
The painted featherflower grows in many places across Western Australia. You can find it along the coast south of Kalbarri National Park. It also grows throughout the Avon Wheatbelt area and even in dry regions west of Kalgoorlie. You can also spot it south of Fremantle in an area called the Swan Coastal Plain biogeographic region.
This plant can live in many different types of environments. It grows on hills or in areas that get wet in winter. It can be found in various kinds of soil. Often, you'll see it growing alongside other Verticordia plants. It likes to live in heathlands (areas with small shrubs), shrublands, or open forests where eucalypt trees grow.
Growing Painted Featherflower in Gardens
It's not very common to grow the painted featherflower in gardens because it can be a bit tricky to get it started. However, once it's established, it can live for about ten years. It grows into a small shrub that produces many beautiful flowers for a long time each season.
This plant prefers the Mediterranean climate found in Western Australia, which has warm, dry summers and mild, wet winters. But, people have successfully grown it in New South Wales too, showing it can adapt to other places.
