Bloss Studio Landscape Architecture & Horticulture Melbourne

JOURNAL

Bits and pieces from time on site and out and about lately. Nice moments, details and plants that have caught our eye.

Magnolia

Magnolia flowers arrive before the leaves, held on bare wood at the end of winter.

An ancient lineage, magnolias evolved before bees, their early flowers adapted instead to beetles moving between thick, waxy petals in search of pollen.

Their history with people is long too. Cultivated in China for centuries, the unopened buds of certain species are still dried to make xinyi, used in traditional medicine.

The name came much later, honouring seventeenth-century French botanist Pierre Magnol.

Narcissus.

Daffodils, of the genus Narcissus, are beginning to appear. In Greek mythology, Narcissus was said to have become captivated by his own reflection in a pool of water, unable to draw himself away. After his death, a flower grew in his place, its bowed head recalling a figure still gazing into the water.

For most of the year, Narcissus exists out of sight, stored within a bulb beneath the soil. With the last stretch of winter, roots stir, leaves break the surface and flowers follow. It is this habit of disappearing and returning that has seen the flower become a symbol of renewal and rebirth.