Kangaroo Paw

Twenty-three kangaroo paws are listed here. Twenty-two are Anigozanthos; the odd one out is Macropidia fuliginosa, which sits in a genus by itself, its green flowers coated in black fur. The spec reads the same across all twenty-three: full sun, low water once established, moderate growth, and nectar on every one of them, with honeyeaters on the stems within days of the first flowers opening. Scale, lifespan, humidity tolerance and summer behaviour separate them.

Ten Bush hybrids, three flavidus, two for collectors

Ten listings carry a Bush name, mostly compact garden hybrids bred for repeat flowering and for more tolerance of ink spot than older strains. Bush Dance comes out of the Bush Gems program. Bush Ballad shows the type: deep red stems held just above the fan rather than towering over it, set roughly half a metre apart for a drift. The two Celebrations selections, Carnivale and Fireworks, were bred tighter again for containers. Compact hybrids are also shorter lived than the tall types, so plan on replanting every few years rather than nursing an ageing clump.

Anigozanthos flavidus and its red and yellow selections take more water, more humidity and heavier soil than the small hybrids, and ink spot troubles them far less. The yellow form shows leaf marking more obviously than the red does. Landscape Scarlet was selected for vigour in mass planting and holds its stems clear of the foliage. Kings Park Royale, despite the name, was bred for compact clumps and belongs at the front of a bed.

Anigozanthos Viridus is a small, fine leaved green flowered species off sandy Western Australian flats, wet through winter and bone dry in summer. It keeps that rhythm here, flowering in the cooler months and pulling back hard once heat arrives, so an empty patch in January means rest rather than failure. Macropidia is harder again and wants coarse sand, sun and a genuinely dry summer, so on the east coast a large pot of gritty sand based mix under cover beats a garden bed.

Sun, drainage and ink spot

Shade is the first mistake. Growth goes soft, stems stretch and lean, flowering thins, and foliage stays wet long enough for disease to start. Wet ground is the second. Paws rot at the rhizome in clay that sits soggy through winter, so mound the bed, keep mulch pulled back off the crown, and water at ground level rather than over the leaves. Ink spot, the black blotching that runs up older fans, is the usual complaint in humid districts, and spraying does little. Cut the affected fan out at the base and bin it instead of trimming the tips. Frost burns leaf tips in cold inland gardens, though established flavidus clumps reshoot from the crown, so those are the forms for a frost district. Snails shear off new fans overnight, so check after rain.

One job carries the genus: the hard cut back. Once the main flush finishes, take spent stems and tired foliage down to about a hand's width above the ground. Feed straight after with a low phosphorus native fertiliser and water it in; rich soil, thick mulch on the crown and constant irrigation do more damage than a lean site. Divide congested clumps when the centre goes woody and bare. Paws drift well in front of grevilleas, a pairing our guide to bird attracting plants leans on.

Pot sizes

Sixteen of the twenty-three offer a 140mm pot, about 1.5 litres of root ball, and thirteen start there. Nine offer 170mm, close to 2.7 litres. Five run to a 5L pot, larger again than the 200mm grade that three carry, which is what to buy for a clump already making stems. Big Red spans 100mm to 5L, so one variety covers a mass planting and a feature clump. Twelve listings come in a single size, so check the grade before the colour.