Blue Pincushion

I know!  I know!  It really is Tiny Tuesday today, and the challenge is "Mystery".  I'm sorry.  I was going to do something clever with kangaroo grass, but I took this picture, and I loved it so much, it had to be blipped.

The blue pincushions are only just starting to flower, and they are so, so beautiful.  Brunonia australis by the way.


The history of the taxonomy is interesting, if you can be bothered to read it.

Specimens of Brunonia were first collected by Robert Brown during the 1801–02 voyage of HMS Investigator under the command of Matthew Flinders. The genus had not been published by early 1810, when members of the Linnean Society of London sought to name a plant genus in Brown's honour. This genus was settled upon because it was so difficult to classify: "The genus under consideration is... exceedingly interesting, on account of its apparent relationship to several very different natural orders, and the great difficulty of referring it to any one in particular." The name Brunonia was chosen because a genus had already been named Brownea in honour of Patrick Browne, and Brunonia was seen as a compromise, "preserving as much resemblance to his name as possible, while I avoid all ambiguity with the Brownea previously established."

In February 1810, James Edward Smith read a formal description of Brunonia to the Linnean Society. Two species were given: Brunonia australis and Brunonia sericea. Later that year, Brown made use of Smith's names in his Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae. However, Smith's speech did not go to print until 1811, so priority of publication of the genus belongs to Brown not Smith. Thus Brown unwittingly violated a virtual botanical taboo, by naming a genus after himself.

B. sericea was reduced to a variety of B. australis in 1907, and given synonymy with B. australis in 1992. A number of other species and variety have been published, but to date none have survived as current taxa except B. australis.