Bought one of these a couple of weeks ago, and it seems to have settled in nicely. Is it just me, or is this the closest thing that we have to a 'native Tibouchina' ?

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~peterrjones/images/melastoma.jpg

(Sorry - validation didnt like my link - please paste this into your browser)

Cheers,

Artie

Yes, the label indicates that the plant accepts pruning : I'll give it a few more weeks to bed in, then I'll take a few centimetres off the end of each stem.

I did find entries on Google which refer to Melastoma as the 'Native Lassiandra', but there was no reference to this on the original label, and I cant find it mentioned in any of my books (GA 'Native Flora', Getting Started with Natives' etc).

Hope that helps
Roy

Roy

I have it in the 'tropical' room in my garden : roughly equal mix of natives and exotics. Will plant something like 'Tibouchina Jules' alongside it to see how similar (or otherwise) they become over time. The conflicting advice run sun/shade is typical with many plants which would be at home in the rainforest, and I am eagerly awaiting the establishment of my canopy. I laugh when I read articles in the magazines aimed at those with 'too much' shade :)

Several decades back, Melastoma malabathricum was a popular garden shrub in NSW and presumably in Qld also. It has largely fallen from fashion and now it's only rarely that I spot a plant in old-established gardens. It was generally regarded as a native of southern Asia, not Australia. Your plant looks very like the plant I knew then, with flowers maybe 7-8 cm across and with 7 petals.

M. affine is currently the name used for the Australian Melastoma, though it's also gone under the names M. polyanthum and M. denticulatum. It extends across the tropical north and down the coast well into NSW. It has a smaller, more delicate flower than M. malabathricum, usually about 5 cm across, with 5 or 6 petals.

M. affine occurs well beyond Australia, through much of Indonesia etc and some Pacific Islands. At one time it was lumped with M. malabathricum, which was treated as a highly variable species. I saw a recent botanical paper in which this view is revived. Regardless of name, I still think Artie's plant is not of native origin. Some of you Queenslanders probably have the native one growing close by, and you might like to compare it.

But Artie's pic (copy his link URL, paste in address bar) is of a flower with 7 petals, at least as far as I am able to count them.

Thanks for all the feedback on this - surprising when you consider that I had never even heard of a 'Native Lasiandra' prior to buying this plant (whatever it turns out to be :) ).

It has a very heavy water requirement. In the wild it is only found on the edge of streams, swamps or on waterlogged areas. On the Atherton Tablelands it occurs along roads in the very wet rainforest.