Melbourne's beautiful native wildflowers: What to look for
Spring in the hills around Melbourne turns up some of the most beautiful flowers it is easy to walk straight past. Many are very small, at ground-level and hidden amongst thick leaf litter and grass.
Bulbine lily in bud, the display still to come.
This is a guide to spotting them, a brief word on what a flower is actually doing out there, plus an honest answer to the question that comes up every time: can I grow this myself?
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What to look for
Most spring wildflowers are close to the ground with flowers no more than a few millimetres across in some cases, so slowing down is important. Look along track edges, in the gaps between grass tussocks and at the base of trees. This is where the ground gets enough light and disturbance for smaller plants to establish. Colour is the first giveaway, as the purples, yellow, whites and pinks contrast against the browns and greens of the bush.
Narrow-leaf bitter pea, one of many spring flowerers sharing dry forest habitat.
Flowering season runs mainly from late winter through spring, and the same patch of ground can look completely different a month apart as different species take their turn.
Never collect from the wild
Never dig up, collect seed from, or pick any of these plants from the wild, even the common ones and even in small amounts. If a plant is not sold commercially, the only place to enjoy it is where it is already growing.
Climbers and scramblers
These five work their way up or along whatever is nearby and are usually spotted as a tangle of flowers threaded through a shrub.
Small-leaved clematis (Clematis microphylla)
Small-leaved clematis produces masses of cream, star-shaped flowers that smother whatever shrub or fence it happens to be scrambling through. It has fluffy, silver seed heads that often last longer on the plant than the flowers themselves, which is where the old name Old Man's Beard comes from.
Star-shaped cream flowers give way to fluffy silver seed heads later in the season.
Specialist native nurseries
Wonga wonga vine (Pandorea pandorana)
Wonga wonga vine produces long, tubular cream flowers with maroon inside the throat. It is one of the most vigorous native climbers, easily covering a trellis or fence within a couple of seasons, which is exactly why it and several named cultivars, Golden Showers, Snowbells and Ruby Belle are widely stocked garden plants.
Cream, maroon-throated flowers on one of the most vigorous native climbers available.
Widely available
Purple coral pea (Hardenbergia violacea)
Purple coral pea produces small purple pea flowers through late winter, often the first strong colour to appear in the bush after the cooler months. It is just as happy trailing over a rock or a low fence as it is twining up a trellis or through a shrub.
One of the earliest and most reliable colour displays of the cooler months.
Widely available
Love creeper (Comesperma volubile)
Love creeper is easy to walk straight past until it flowers, since the stems are fine and largely leafless. The small blue to purple flowers have a distinctive winged shape, similar in structure to a pea flower. It flowers from around July through to December.
Fine, near-invisible stems that only give themselves away once the flowers open.
Specialist native nurseries
Twining fringe-lily (Thysanotus patersonii)
Twining fringe-lily has no real leaves, just a wiry green stem twining through grass or low shrubs. Each petal has a delicate fringed edge, giving the flower a slightly torn, papery texture up close. Individual flowers usually last only a single day, so timing is as much a part of spotting one as knowing where to look.
Fringed, papery-textured petals that usually last only a single day.
Not commercially available
Ground lilies and orchids
Low, easy to miss and often gone within days of opening, this group rewards exactly the slow, close-to-the-ground looking described above.
Early Nancy (Wurmbea dioica subsp. dioica)
Early Nancy is usually the first wildflower of the season. The small white to purple-streaked flowers sit close to the soil on a thin stem making them very easy to miss. Like several plants on this list, individual plants are either male or female rather than both.
Often the very first wildflower to appear each season.
Not commercially available
Bulbine lily (Bulbine bulbosa)
Bulbine lily produces bright yellow, star-shaped flowers on a tall, leafless stem, though each individual flower lasts only a single day before the next one along the stem takes over. Its narrow, fleshy leaves smell faintly of onion when crushed, which is where the alternative names native leek and native onion come from.
Each flower lasts only a day, but the display continues along the stem for weeks.
Specialist native nurseries
Milkmaids (Burchardia umbellata)
Milkmaids carries its white flowers in a loose cluster right at the top of a single, leafless stalk. The flowers are fragrant up close, sweeter-smelling than most of the other lilies on this list. Reddish-brown to grey anthers give an otherwise plain white flower some contrast.
A sweetly scented cluster of white flowers on a single bare stalk.
Specialist native nurseries
Wax-lip orchid (Glossodia major)
Wax-lip orchid produces just a single hairy leaf and one or two purple to mauve flowers per plant, each with a paler, waxy-textured lip that gives the species its common name. Like almost all terrestrial orchids it depends on a specific soil fungus to germinate at all, which is part of why it can never be reliably cultivated.
A single hairy leaf and one or two waxy-lipped flowers per plant.
Not commercially available
Murnong, yam daisy (Microseris walteri)
Murnong is easily mistaken for a dandelion from a distance. Its sweet, radish-like tuber was a staple food across much of Victoria before European settlement. The name itself comes from Woiwurrung, the language of the Wurundjeri people of the Melbourne area.
A drooping bud gives it away before the yellow flower ever opens.
Specialist native nurseries
FACT
Named cultivars like wonga wonga vine's Golden Showers or Snowbells did not appear from nowhere. A grower spots an individual wild plant with a genuine point of difference, a stronger colour, a more compact habit, better flowering, and propagates from cuttings or tissue culture to keep that exact plant true rather than growing new ones from seed. It can take years of trialling before a selection is considered reliable enough to name and sell.
Shrubs, groundcovers and daisies
A mixed group of low shrubs and mat-forming plants, most doing the quiet, unglamorous work of holding a patch of ground together.
Lacy pomaderris (Pomaderris elachophylla)
Lacy pomaderris carries tiny cream flowers that have no petals at all, just sepals surrounding a small cluster of stamens. The branchlets and leaf undersides are covered in fine, rust-coloured hairs, which gives it a soft, faintly furry appearance. It is also genuinely uncommon, known from only a handful of sites across the state.
Petal-less flowers and rust-coloured, star-shaped hairs on the branchlets.
Not commercially available
Common beard-heath (Leucopogon virgatus)
Common beard-heath carries small, white flowers in tight clusters, each one densely bearded on the inside. It belongs to the heath family and like most of its relatives it is notoriously difficult to propagate or transplant successfully. It flowers from midwinter well into spring, a longer season than most of the plants on this list.
Small tubular flowers, densely bearded inside, in clusters along wiry stems.
Not commercially available
Creamy candles (Stackhousia monogyna)
Creamy candles carries dozens of small, five-lobed star flowers packed tightly into a single upright spike. Unlike its rarer relative Stackhousia subterranea, which is unpleasantly scented, this species has almost no fragrance at all. It flowers from late winter through much of spring.
Dozens of tiny star flowers packed into a single upright spike.
Not commercially available
Black's goodenia (Goodenia blackiana)
Black's goodenia spreads in low, ground-hugging mats of soft, woolly-backed leaves. Like other members of the Goodeniaceae family, the flower is distinctly lopsided rather than symmetrical, with the lower petals fanned out more prominently than the upper ones. It also serves as a caterpillar food plant for several native butterfly species.
A lopsided, fan-shaped flower typical of the wider Goodeniaceae family.
Not commercially available
Button everlasting (Coronidium scorpioides)
Button everlasting's yellow flowerheads are made up of papery bracts which is why they keep their colour and shape for so long after picking. The woolly, upright stems rise to hold a single flowerhead at the top of each one. It flowers over an unusually long stretch, from spring well into summer.
Papery bracts rather than true petals, which is why the colour holds so well.
Specialist native nurseries
Spiny-headed mat-rush (Lomandra longifolia)
Spiny-headed mat-rush flowers are small and clustered low among the dense, strappy leaves. Individual plants are either male or female. Its tough, fibrous leaves have also been widely used by Aboriginal people for weaving baskets and other everyday items.
Flowers are almost hidden among the leaves; the leaves themselves have a long history of use in weaving.
Widely available
The curious one
Not a groundcover, a climber or a lily, and worth its own section for it.
Pale sundew (Drosera hookeri)
Pale sundew's leaves are covered in sticky hairs that trap and slowly digest small insects. Its white flowers are well above those trap leaves, a genuine solution to a real problem: without that distance, the plant would risk digesting the very insects it needs to pollinate it.
Its flowers are held well clear of the sticky trap leaves below, for good reason.
Not commercially available
Worth seeking out
These plants are worth seeking out in the wild. Once you know what you are looking for, they truly are remarkable, precise and strange. A handful of spots around Melbourne are especially reliable for spring wildflowers if you want to go looking for your own:
- Warrandyte State Park, a genuine bushland reserve in the north-east
- Lerderderg State Park, wattles, peas, heath and orchids through a remote gorge landscape
- Baluk Willam Flora Reserve, Belgrave South, south-east, home to more than a third of Victoria's orchid species
- Brisbane Ranges National Park, west, one of the more reliable spots in the state for spring orchids
- Bunyip State Park, further south-east, less visited than the others
Murnong, one of many finds still waiting in Melbourne's remaining bushland reserves.
keep reading
A Guide to Australian Native Gardening
How to plan, plant and care for a thriving native garden, whatever your experience level.
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