Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Telopea oreades
Common name
Gippsland waratah
Family
Proteaceae
Where found
Rainforest, wet forest, forest margins, and stream banks. Ranges south from the Mongarlowe district east of Braidwood.
Notes
Shrub or tree to 12 m high. Bark dark grey, smooth, with horizontal markings. Stems longitudinally ridged, with lenticels, rusty hairy when young, becoming hairless. Leaves alternating up the stems. Adult leaves 10–30 cm long, 15–60 mm wide, hairless, dull dark green, venation obscure on the upper surface, conspicuous on the lower surface but scarcely raised, margins entire, tips pointed. Juvenile leaves sometimes 3-lobed. Intermediate leaves entire. Flowers red inside and pink to red outside, rarely white, with a curved tube, the tube split on one side by the style after the flowers open, with 4 'petals' each 20-36 mm long, joined to each other in a slit tube. Flowers in heads of 30–60 flowers, to about 100 mm in diameter; upper flowers opening first. Bracts subtending the flower heads mostly 15–75 mm long, pink and/or green, not conspicuous. Flowers Winter to Summer. Seeds with one wing.
Sporadically hybridises with Telopea mongaensis where their ranges overlap.
Protected NSW.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Telopea~oreades (accessed 11 April 2021)
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