Waratah - An Australian Native Flower

My friends Simon and Christine visited us last Saturday. They brought with them yummy, yummy Choux Puffs, Pavlova and a fruits platter for dessert. They also brought along a humongous bouquet of flowers. It appears that bringing a bouquet of flowers to the host's home is a common practice here. But these flowers caught me off guard.

Besides the weight which scares me (it was about 3kg?), I have never, ever, in my life seen a flower so BIG before. Close up, they reminded me initially of those 'man-eating flowers'. In fact, there was no way my pathetically little crystal vase is gonna accomodate the bunch.

I was told its name is Waratah, an Australian native flower. I googled more about it today and received my next lesson about Australia. Click here to read more.

After my friends left, I managed to separate out the stalks and squeezed 7, with 3 of them blooming, into my vase. The other 6 stalks had to make do with sitting in a pail of water. The 3 blooming flowers were the size of a small durian each and I had to distribute their weight evenly, otherwise the vase might just lose its balance.

Besides the size, these flowers had a very interesting and 'unreal' texture. They look and feel like felt (the cloth). If not for their amazing ability to absorb water, I would have believed they were fake flowers. And these guys are good 'drinkers', like their human countrparts. Since I've placed them in front of the sink, I see them at close proximity every day when I wash the dishes. And every day, I observed the water level in the vase going down dramatically. The water literally gets sucked up overnight. Half a vase everyday. If the remaining unbloomed flowers are gonna bloom to the size of their 3 sisters, I think I should go and buy another bigger vase. It looks like I'll be able to have these pink flowers by my sink for a pretty long time.