Cultivation
The tree's gnarled bark, large green leaves, and yellow flower spikes are attractive horticultural features. B. dentata is vulnerable to the cold winters in cultivation in Melbourne and recovers over the hotter months of summer. It has not been able to be grown in colder climates, such as those of Canberra.
The plant has been seldom cultivated, though isolated reports suggest it is in fact frost hardy. Seeds do not require any treatment, and take 32 to 40 days to germinate. It was introduced into the United Kingdom in 1822.
Aborigines in the Northern Territory would light old seed cones and use them as firebrands, these lasting for up to two hours. The nectar was consumed by indigenous people. A hot smoking flower spike was used to cauterise leprosy sores, and people would squat over smoking cones in the hope this would relieve diarrhea. The thin woody spikes that did not develop follicles were used as nasal ornaments by aboriginal women, and flower spikes were used as combs.
Read more about this topic: Banksia Dentata
Famous quotes containing the word cultivation:
“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 (1840–1910)
“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 (1792–1873)
“Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)