O Christmas Bush, your decorations are out early
Three years ago, Emma Rooksby wondered if the Christmas Bush needed a new name. Now it is flowering even earlier
I wrote back in December 2023 about the NSW Christmas Bush or Boola (Ceratopetalum gummiferum), because it seemed to be flowering a bit early. Dr Brett Summerall of the Sydney Botanic Garden told ABC Illawarra's Justin Huntsdale that Jacarandas were flowering three weeks earlier than usual in that hot and dry spring, and he expected few Christmas Bush flowers to be around by the end of the year.
This year, the Christmas Bush is having an even earlier flowering in many places, so I thought I'd better feature it now rather than wait until the holiday season.
As many native plant websites explain, one interesting feature of this species is that the red coloration is not actually from the petals, but from its sepals, parts of the flower that sit behind and protect the developing flower buds (when they are collectively known as a calyx).
You can see a diagram further below showing the parts of a 'conventional' flower including the sepals. Typically sepals are green, but in this species, as the spent flowers develop into fruits, the sepals enlarge and turn red before falling together with the fruit.
The fruit itself is a dry nut, of no particular interest to humans but very popular with many parrot species.
Here are some Sulphur-crested Cockatoos enjoying Christmas Bush or Boola fruit, back in early December 2023, when my previous article was published.
And here is another photo from 14 December 2025.
By my reckoning, our Christmas Bushes will have lost their colour and fed the cockies by the end of November this year, exceeding the early flowering of 2023. Watch this space!
