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Correa backhousiana Hook.

Modern name

Correa backhouseana Hook.

A densely branched shrub, attaining a height of 15 ft in the wild state, less in cultivation; branchlets greyish brown, slender, clad when young with stellate hairs. Leaves opposite, ovate-elliptic, rounded or blunt at the apex, rounded or slightly cordate at the base, 35 to 125 in. long, margin entire, very dark green above, densely clad below with rust-coloured down; leaf-stalks 15 to 13 in. long. Flowers solitary or in few-flowered cymes, more or less pendulous; calyx cup-shaped, with the rim level all round or with four very shallow teeth; petals greenish yellow, rather thick, united into a funnel-shaped corolla about 1 in. long, with acute lobes; stamens eight, protruding beyond the mouth of the corolla; the four stamens inserted opposite the lobes have the filaments widened in the lower half, while in the other four they are of almost equal width throughout their length. Bot. Mag., n.s., t. 289.

Native of Tasmania on the north and west coasts. It thrives very well at Tresco Abbey in the Isles of Scilly, where it is used as a hedging-plant, and has also been grown in other mild gardens, usually as “C. speciosa” or “C. virens”. It is closely allied to C. reflexa (speciosa) but the densely downy undersides of the leaves distinguish it.

C. lawrenciana Hook. – This species, a native of Tasmania and Victoria, closely approaches the preceding in some of its forms, but may always be distinguished by the stamens, all eight of which are alike (cf. the description of C. backhousiana above). Being a montane species it is likely to prove hardier than the other Tasmanian correas. At Brodick Castle in the Isle of Arran it thrives very well; a plant 8 ft high and 6 ft across was damaged in a gale and removed in the spring of 1965, but young replacements are already flowering freely (1967).


Genus

Correa

Other species in the genus

[No species article available]