Cultivation
Banksia grossa is cultivated for its attractive needle-like leaves and rusty-brown flower spikes, both of which can be quite variable in colour. This species favours well-drained sandy or loamy acidic soils with a pH of 5.5 to 7, and a sunny aspect. Once established, it tolerates dry spells. It can be pruned heavily as it resprouts from its lignotuber.
Propagation is by seed. The seeds do not require any treatment before sowing, and take around 14 days to germinate. This is a slow-growing plant, taking 5 to 7 years to reach maturity and begin flowering.
Read more about this topic: Banksia Grossa
Famous quotes containing the word cultivation:
“If the minds of women were enlightened and improved, the domestic circle would be more frequently refreshed by intelligent conversation, a means of edification now deplorably neglected, for want of that cultivation which these intellectual advantages would confer.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (17921873)
“The cultivation of one set of faculties tends to the disuse of others. The loss of one faculty sharpens others; the blind are sensitive in touch. Has not the extreme cultivation of the commercial faculty permitted others as essential to national life, to be blighted by disease?”
—J. Ellen Foster (18401910)
“Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.”
—James Baldwin (19241987)