Nuytsia Floribunda is generally known as the Western Australian Christmas tree.
In southwest WA (its only home range) most people simply call it a “Christmas tree”.
Enormously more colourful and much more bizarre than any “traditional” Christmas tree, it is usually in full bloom at Christmas.
The world’s largest member of the mistletoe family is hemi-parasitic, rather than merely parasitic; Nuytsia (the single member of its own genus) does photosynthesize, and it has prodigiously long roots.
At least one source claims that no other living tree on Earth has longer roots.
I suspect that may not be true, but certainly no other “mistletoe” has roots even remotely in the same league. (purely parasitic species have no underground roots at all. Nuytsia roots even have “knives” that cut into the roots of their “prey”! Sometimes, these “knives” cut electric power cables)
By February 2022 Perth’s Nuytsia had finished their annual flowering.
Several degrees and some hundreds of kilometres further south – and close to the cooler Southern Ocean – Nuytsia at Waychinicup had not yet lost their “festive” appearance.
(photo of Nuytsia bloom is copyright Doug Spencer, taken on 07 February 2022)
Click here for an overview/appreciation of one of the world’s most surprising, most resilient plants.