Telopea speciosissima

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Telopea speciosissima, photographed by ronavery — fig. b ronavery, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 172647413

Telopea speciosissima, photographed by Nathan Ruser — fig. c Nathan Ruser, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 164181389

Telopea speciosissima, photographed by bunjaree_cottages — fig. d bunjaree_cottages, CC0 1.0 / obs. 163557757

Telopea speciosissima, photographed by Tim — fig. e Tim, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 105236957

Telopea speciosissima, photographed by Kim Lapere — fig. f Kim Lapere, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 140640730

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 1 botanical country

Native distribution of Telopea speciosissima, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
New South Wales	NSW	AUSTRALASIA

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 526 in flower of 806 examined

14%

48%

87%

92%

86%

24%

Proportion of examined Telopea speciosissima in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	2	14	14%	4% to 40%
Feb	0	21	0%	0% to 15%
Mar	2	36	6%	2% to 18%
Apr	1	21	5%	1% to 23%
May	2	31	6%	2% to 21%
Jun	0	14	0%	0% to 22%
Jul	0	29	0%	0% to 12%
Aug	40	84	48%	37% to 58%
Sep	196	225	87%	82% to 91%
Oct	175	190	92%	87% to 95%
Nov	103	120	86%	78% to 91%
Dec	5	21	24%	11% to 45%

Peak flowering in Oct. Each bar is the share of Telopea speciosissima observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 526 of 806 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 4 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Embothrium spathulatum Cav.
Embothrium speciossimum Sm.
Embothrium speciosum Salisb.
Hylogyne spathulata (Cav.) Kuntze

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.