A mostly constrained splash of carmine amid New Zealand green

This cheery little number popped up in the Gardens around late September. Of course it was there in early September, and for many months before, but the carmine-coloured flowers attracted my attention and that of our landscape architect, Andrew Laidlaw.

Andrew calls Metrosideros carminea, from New Zealand, a favourite plant, although I suspect it might join a rather long list. Given the number of places it is popping upt, I'm guessing our curator of the New Zealand collection, Kate Roud, is also rather fond of it. And I can see why.

The most commonly used common name is Carmine Rātā - carmine for the flower colour, rātā the Māori name for many species in the genus Metrosideros. Another Māori name for this species is Akakura or simply Aka. And sometimes it gets called Rātā Vine.

A genus which also includes the well known New Zealand Christmas Tree or Pohutukawa, Metrosideros exelsa, and a total of 60 species.

Metrosideros extends across the Pacific with, as is often the case (e.g. Araucaria), the greatest diversity (21 species) in New Caledonia; New Zealand has a dozen. There is also a single species in South America and one in South Africa.

While it looks like a tidy shrub in these pictures, in the coastal forests of North Island it becomes a woody vine and rise up to 15 metres through nearby trees. Our specimens though are grown from cuttings taken from adult plants, which are meant to remain shrub-like. 

The New Zealand Plant Conservation Network note that plants in nature will remain in a 'juvenile state', and not flower, for a number of years. Under the right conditions, they convert to adult form and begin climbing, flowering only when they reach sunlight at the top of a supporting tree. Cuttings grown from adult 'semi-hardwood' will flower readily, it's said, but not climb. 

As you can see to the right of the picture above, one of our otherwise shrubby and flowering specimens, though, has decided to rise up and climb a nearby cordyline stem. Whether this is a temporary aberration or the beginnings of it turning into a woody climber time, as they say, will tell.

Our plants have small glossy leaves, typical of the species, although the new growth I saw was not typically pink and hairy, but maybe that's only in the juvenile state. Like most in the family Myrtaceae the leaves have prominent oil glands and are aromatic when crushed - smelling a little like a bay laurel perhaps. 

The fruit is a dry capsule, as you find in tea-trees and gums (rather than the fleshy fruits of some Myrtaceae, such as lilly pillies).

There are a number of cultivars available for the shrub form, with different flower and even leaf colours (the latter bordered with yellow). It doesn't like frosts but is tolerant of wind and doesn't seem to be fussed by sitting out in the Melbourne sun. I expect this is a plant we, and many others, will grow more of.