Flowering Matchstick Banksia at LazeAway
I recently made a trip to Popanyinning and stayed, as usual, at the LazeAway (Laze-A-Way) Farm Stay and Caravan Park. The primary reason for the trip was to drop off five of my photographs that I have entered into the art competition in the upcoming Pingelly Family Festival (Pingelly FAM Fest). This event is happening on the weekend of the 28th of this month (September, 2024).
I will write more about the Pingelly FAM Fest in another post as I plan to go back on the 28th and see how it goes. In this post I am going to talk a bit about the somewhat famous—although I didn’t know it at the time—matchstick banksia tree or bush. To me it is more like a bush than a tree.
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It seems that the banksia cuneata, commonly known as the matchstick banksia or the Quairading banksia, is a highly endangered variation of the flowering banksia tree family.
As an outcome of my quick research it seems that the matchstick banksia (see Wikipedia page here [opens in a new tab]) only occurs in Western Australia and its numbers are small. My research indicates that there is only about 340 to 580 of these plants remaining in the wild and these are contained in just eleven (11) known regional groupings.
The matchstick banksia is threatened by the Phytophthora dieback (dieback) disease, general clearing, bush fires, and invasive weeds.
The banksia cuneata is also rather particular about where it chooses to grow, limiting itself to elevations between 750 and 1000 feet and favouring yellow sandy locations. Yes. Not just any sand; it much prefers yellow sand to grow in.
The bulk of the reported known remaining bushes/trees are located solely in the general areas of Quairading and Pingelly.
While Wikipedia tells us that the flowers are cream coloured I would disagree with this—as you can see from pictures included in this post. The three matchstick banksia bushes that I saw on LazeAway all had bright pink and green blooms.
However, I did notice that some of the older blooms do seem to fade to cream as their days in the sun come to an end and you can see this in the picture below. And notice I managed to get an ant in that picture as well—quite by accident.
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When the owner of the LazeAway Farm Stay and Caravan Park first told me about these bushes on the property I imagined that the flower was about the size of a tennis ball; maybe bigger. However they are more like the size of golf ball.
Not only is the matchstick banksia endangered, for whatever reason it often chooses not to bloom. This particular cluster of five bushes in the grouping on LazeAway has only been known to flower once in the last 25 years and I just happened to be there at the right time.
Mind you, it was a challenge getting to the location of the grouping.
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Firstly, I had to drive my Forester up a narrow sandy incline to get out of a yellow sand sandpit, which, despite my initial concerns the Forester handled with ease. Then I had to clamber over a rabbit proof fence topped with rusty barbed wire. While getting over such a fence would normally not have been that much of a challenge for me, at this time I was suffering from SNBI (sciatic nerve bundle injury) in my lower back and down my right leg. As a result of this getting a leg over this fence required that I absorb a high degree of pain. Thirdly, as there was ample evidence of kangaroos in the area due to the amount of roo poo, I then had to take my chances with picking up a roo tick on the 100 metre or so walk into the bush to where the matchstick bushes were located.
And then, obviously, I had to get back out again avoiding a roo tick taking up residence on my body somewhere.
For those that know what it means (I don’t), the matchstick banksia lacks a lignotuber so, unlike most of the other bushes and trees in Australia which don’t mind the odd bushfire now and then, the matchstick banksia is killed by bushfire.
The matchstick banksia was declared critically endangered after a 1982 survey only found the five remaining populations or groupings.
A number of conservation activities have been undertaken since 1982 including the erection of rabbit proof fencing around populations and the baiting of rabbits in the vicinity of known groupings.
You can find more information on the matchstick banksia at the following links (all links open in a new tab):
