Here's another plant that is flowering for the first time this year in our garden. It's been growing well over the past three years and almost produced buds last year but seemed to run out of time as the season drew to a close.

While it's not an Australian native, originating instead from South Africa, it does reside in our backyard native garden. It's featured before in a post of mine when I showed my favourite garden aspect (it's behind the blue fescue).

It begins flowering from August through November on horizontal branches. The flowers, known as inflorescences, bloom at the end of each stem in clumps of 2-3. The leaves are quite hard and pointy at the ends.

Leucospermum "Pincushion" can be grown from seed that is produced within the flowers but it's not an easy proposition. They are hard nut-like seeds and in a natural setting would only propagate after a fire. Therefore, if you try to propagate these you may want to use heat to crack open the nuts and plant the seeds in early autumn.