Pink Flowered Rosemary

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) is a perennial edible herb of which there are many varieties, some are better than others.  Some are strong growers and others weak, some have upright growth while others cascade over the side of things, some have larger leaves or more fragrance than others.  They are all edible, which is nice. 

For years I have heard about a pink flowered variety of rosemary.  I considered getting one, but I already have a good, very strong growing blue flowered rosemary.  Then, not overly long ago, I found a pink flowered rosemary. 

It was a tiny and weak plant, it had pink flowers, and I figured it was worth giving it a try.  I don't tend to have great success with rosemary cuttings, but I took a cutting anyway.  This cutting survived and grew for me.  

Recently the cutting grown plant started to flower.  It is indeed a pink flowered rosemary, and it is quite pretty.  Just like most varieties of rosemary, it produces a lot of flowers.  

Flowers look white in the photo but are more pink in real life

Pink flowered rosemary

The photos don't capture the colour of the flowers very well.  They look white or very pale pink in the photos, but in real life they are far more pink. 

Rosemary is a culinary herb, all parts are edible, people mostly eat the leaves or use small sprigs in cooking.  I'm happy to say that this pink flowered rosemary smells and tastes pretty much the same as my normal blue flowered rosemary.  Perhaps the pink scent is slightly weaker, but this may be due to growing conditions.  Either way, it smells good enough for me. 

Most rosemary has blue flowers.  I grow an upright variety, as well as a prostrate variety.  They both have blue flowers.  I am tempted to graft a prostrate rosemary onto an upright one and make a weeping plant, but have never gotten around to that. 

Below are some of my blue flowered Rosemary.  Again, my photos don't capture the colour well.  

Most rosemary has blue flowers

One thing I like about rosemary is how many flowers it makes, and how long it flowers each year.  For months on end my plant produces many hundreds of flowers.  At times there are so many flowers that it is hard to see the leaves.

Many beneficial insects and other pollinators like rosemary flowers.  There are so many flowers in such a small amount of space that it takes little effort for bees to collect a lot of nectar and pollen.  

My rosemary pretty much always has bees on it as well as many other species of pollinators.  

Superb fairy wrens and other tiny birds like rosemary too.  They like to forage in shorter grass, and have thick shrubby things they can dart into when danger comes.  Larger birds can't get to the wrens when they hide in the rosemary.

Bees love rosemary

Rosemary produces a lot of flowers over a long time

Another thing I like about rosemary is that the upright varieties can grow quite tall.  I have some blue flowered rosemary growing along the edge of the chicken's run.  Even though my chickens don't tend to eat rosemary it is still beneficial to them.  

The rosemary grows tall and dense, and provides afternoon shade for my hens.  Shade is important, most animals struggle in the heat of summer.   

As it grows through the wire, the chickens brush past it and release some of its oils.  These oils can lower the amount of lice and other external parasites that bother the hens.  This will never eradicate poultry lice, but it can help to reduce lice numbers, which is a good thing.

The massive number of flowers on the rosemary also lures in various insects, which in turn attract small hunting spiders.  The chickens eat many of these insects and spiders.  While the chickens probably don't eat enough of these insects/spiders to lower the feed bill, live food is good for hens and helps them stay healthy.  

Rosemary growing along chicken run to block afternoon sun

It was very windy, these plants are normally more upright

My pink flowered rosemary is still a small plant.  It is growing a 10cm pot of soil, and would benefit from being planted somewhere with more room for root growth. 

I am not sure where to plant it at this stage, but think it will do better in the soil than it does in a small pot.  Perhaps I should also grow this near the chicken's run.  As i grows taller it can also help provide afternoon shade.  Or perhaps I will find somewhere else to plant it.  

I sometimes sell rosemary and other edible herbs and perennial vegetables and heirloom vegetable seeds through my for sale page.  Most things are quite seasonal, so my list of things for sale changes each month.  

Baby bird nest fern

Bird's nest fern Asplenium nidus are native to Australia (and a bunch of other countries).  They are lovely and undemanding plants.  

These are commonly sold as house plants.  You often see these for sale in garden shops or florists, but they rarely explain how these things will grow.  These ferns are long lived perennials, they live for decades, and they can grow absolutely huge if well cared for.  

I have a bird's nest fern that I got around 2001.  It was tiny when I got it and has moved house with me many times.  At our last house it had fronds over 6 feet long.  It declined a bit since living here, but still grows new fronds a few times per year.  Not bad for a 25 year old fern! 

My daughter saw a baby bird nest fern and thought it was super cute. 

This fern is tiny, for scale the pot is 10cm across.  

We are not in the ideal climate for bird nest ferns, but they survive here if protected.  This tiny fern is currently in my greenhouse, but may be moved to the deck soon.    

This fern's growth is a little uneven, which is pretty common and easy enough to fix.  I will rotate the pot from time to time, this should result in more even growth.  

I made this post mostly so I can look back and see how tiny this was when we got it.  It is spring here now, so this should do some fast growth.  We will see how big this can grow before winter comes.  

Nerine flower from seed

Years ago my daughter came home from pre-school with a flower bulb.  It had one leaf.  I didn't know what type of flower bulb this was.  We planted this bulb, and the leaf died.  It didn't re-sprout that season, and I worried that I had killed it.  I felt really guilty.  

The following year it grew leaves, it sent up a flower stalk that was eaten by snails, then it died back.  Again I worried I had killed it. 

Over the next few years it grew leaves.  It flowered a few times, but I never took much notice of it.  

This last year the bulb flowered, and I paid attention, it is a nerine.  The flowers were pink, and rather beautiful.

Nerine flowering

Nerine

Nerines are dormant over summer, when the leaf died it was doing what it is meant to do.  I just didn't know that at the time because I didn't know what type of flower bulb it was.  All that worry about having killed the bulb and feeling guilty was for nothing. 

The flowers look nice.  I considered cutting them to bring them in and putting them in a vase, but left them in the garden because I wanted to see if they would set seed. 

After a while the flowers started to fade.  It was obvious that some were developing seeds.  I had never grown nerine from seed before, or even seen nerine seeds before, so hoped I could save some seeds and give this a go.

Nerine flowers fading and developing seeds

I forgot about this, and when I remembered most of the seeds were gone but there were still a few seeds left.  I collected these and brought them inside for safety.  

Nerine seeds are large and fleshy.  I am not sure if they are seeds, or if they are fruits each with a single seed inside.  I am guessing that similar to choko, these are probably fruits with a single seed inside them.  

Nerine seed collected

Presumably these are nerine fruits, each with one seed inside

These seeds were left on the kitchen window sill, and ignored.  

I read that Nerine seeds germinate better on the bench than they do in the soil.  I don't know how true this is, but it seems to make sense.  I am told that nerine seeds tend to rot if planted deep in soil, and I'm told they need light to germinate.  Again, I'm not sure if this is true, but from my very limited experience this appears to be true.

I left these seeds on the window sill.  One day I noticed that two of the seeds had sprouted.  This was my signal to plant them. 

Nerine seeds germinating

Nerine seed left on bench started to germinate

I pushed the seeds gently into soil in a pot, and watered them.  I didn't want to bury the seeds, as I wanted them to have some sunlight.  

After this I placed the pot in my greenhouse where it would be protected from strong frosts.  

I was not certain what the little sprout coming out of the seeds was.  I didn't know if it was a leaf shoot and should face up, or a root and should face down.  If I had it upside down this could be bad.  

For this reason I planted the seeds on their side, the sprout could easily do what it needed to do, and go up or down as needed.  The seeds that had not yet sprouted I put with the germinating dot (not sure what this is called) on the soil surface so root or leaf could go whichever direction it needed.

It quickly became evident that the little sprout from the nerine seeds is a root.  It searched out the soil and pushed its way down.  

Nerine seeds germinating 

That little root hit the soil, then the part that was above ground began to swell.  This swelling grew and turned into a tiny bulb.  The tiny bulb then grew some tiny leaves.  

I have grown spring flowering bulbs from seed before, and all of those produced a bulb under the soil.  Watching nerines grow a bulb above the soil line was new to me.  

  

Nerine seedlings producing fat little bulbs

Nerine seedlings 

Nerine seedlings forming tiny bulbs above soil

Tiny nerine seedling bulbs starting to produce leaves

Now I have a few little nerine seedlings growing.  From here I need to grow them out, divide them when the time is right, and wait.  

I am told the seedlings can grow through the dormant season the first year to give them a head start.  Each week the little bulbs are slightly fatter, and the leaves are slightly larger, so they are doing what they should be doing.  Even so, growing nerine from seed to flower takes time.  

Nerine seedlings getting fatter bulbs and longer leaves

If all goes well they should flower in about 3 or 4 years.  I look forward to seeing what colour blooms they produce.  Presumably they will all be some shade of pink, but some may be darker and others lighter, all of them should be slightly different as they are genetically unique plants.  

To help me remember later, I recorded some important dates below:

Nerine flowering April/May 2025

Nerine seed collected 19/06/2025

Nerine seed planted when I noticed the first seeds had germinated 10/09/2025 

Persicaria hydropiper Water Pepper

For a few years I heard about a plant called water pepper, Persicaria hydropiper, it is also called smartweed.  I almost bought seeds, but they sold out a few yeas ago and it hasn't ever come in stock again.  

This plant looks superficially a lot like Vietnamese coriander (Persicaria odorata), but lacks the dark smudge.  Unlike perennial Vietnamese coriander, water pepper is an annual.  

According to the Victorian Department of Agriculture, this plant 'may or may not be native to Australia'.  I think that means it is growing in a lot of areas, isn't causing any harm to anyone, and it has been there for so long that they don't know if it is native or introduced.  

Persicaria hydropiper - Water Pepper

After impatiently waiting for seed to return for sale, I found some plants growing near a river.  There were a few large clumps of this plant.  All of them were near water, but none were underwater and none were growing as emergent plants.  

I took two small cuttings and brought them home.  Much like Vietnamese coriander, the water pepper was simple to grow from small cuttings.  I didn't want to disturb the local population and figured two small cuttings would be the least invasive way for me to grow this plant.  

I wanted two cuttings just in case it needed a second clone in order to set seed.  In hind sight I could have taken a few plants without making any real difference to that population, but the cuttings worked for me.

I did a lot of research before tasting this plant to make sure it was the correct species.  There are many species of Persicaria, many look similar, and all of them are edible.  This is a relief because even had I mixed up the species I would not endanger myself by eating it.

Water pepper tastes hot and peppery.  Apparently it was one of the plants used in Europe as a pepper substitute when pepper and other spices were prohibitively expensive.  Some people say it tastes similar to horseradish or wasabi, but I find it to be unique.  

The heat in water pepper comes from a substance called polygodial.  It is kind of a cool heat, if that makes any sense at all.  I find the seeds make my tongue numb.  I like it.

Seed grown water pepper plants

My water pepper grew really well.  It liked damp soil, and grew into tall plants quickly.  I took a cutting of one of my plants and grew it in garden soil where it was not overly damp.  This did ok, but not as well as the ones that had boggy soil.

It wasn't hard to pinch out the growing points and make them branch into bushy and productive plants.  If you were harvesting the leaves you would be doing this automatically, and the more you harvest the better they would grow.  Had I wanted to, I could easily have taken many more cuttings from my plants and expanded the numbers considerably.

Given how easy water pepper is to grow, and how this is too peppery to be eaten in large quantities, I did a bit of reading if any breeding work has been done to make this more of a salad vegetable.  

It turns out there is no need for this as there are other species that lack the heat, and are already good and productive vegetables.  

I found lots of info on several different Persicaria species on someone else's blog.  One species I would love to get some day is Lady's thumb (Persicaria maculosa).  It sounds pretty incredible.

I know that Lady's thumb, and a few of the other species, are present in Australia, but I haven't been able to get them yet.    

I think Lady's thumb can be a bit of a garden weed, so no one seems to sell it.  Hopefully one day I am able to try some and see what it tastes like.  Like most Persicaria species it is meant to need a lot of water to thrive, so even if it is a garden weed it shouldn't bee overly difficult to control.  Lots of edibles, such as mint or lemon balm are weeds, I just grow them with care.  

My water pepper plants grew well over the warmer seasons.  They grew nice and tall, then flowered, and died.  Being annual plants this did not come as a surprise.  I collected some seed, and sprinkled some into the soil in the original pot. 

The seeds of water pepper are edible, and are hot/peppery.  I tasted a few, they were pretty intense.  I liked them, but collecting enough seeds to use in a meal seems a bit labour intensive for my liking.  Perhaps if I had more plants this would be faster and easer, but for now I am only collecting seeds for planting so I need fewer of them.  

Once the weather warmed, the seed started to germinate.  Germination was a bit patchy, but these seeds were not planted, instead they had been in this pot for months over winter so staggered germination was expected.  I'm told the seeds don't need stratification, and you can just plant them when the weather warms. 

My Vietnamese coriander flowers each year, and it is in the same Genus as water pepper.  I don't know if anyone has ever tried to cross the two.  I have a few projects at the moment so am not sure if that is a job for me at this stage.  

Water pepper seedlings germinating

I am tempted to go back to the place I collected the initial cuttings and collect some more cuttings from more individual plants, perhaps taste a leaf from each and take a cutting from anything that stands out.  Maybe I will see if I can find a different population somewhere else and collect a few cuttings from there as they would have a different genetic stock.  Having cuttings from a few more plants would increase the genetic diversity of my stock, which is a good thing.

Being seed grown means there should be some variation, and some ability to select for the traits I want.  If nothing else having greater diversity means if there is a pest or disease, my plants should be able to cope better.  As these were locally grown, they have already survived everything in my area and are pretty well adapted to growing here. 

Water pepper flowering - I wish I took better photos

I think water pepper is a nice plant, and would like to grow more of it.  I see very few places selling plants or seeds, which means very few people will ever have a chance to eat some of this.  

I will probably sell water pepper plants through my for sale page over the warmer months.  I may sell seed if I ever collect a lot of them, or I may just stick to plants as they grow so well.  I mostly sell perennial vegetables and perennial herb plants, but think there is a place for a few annuals like this one.

Perennial vegetables for sale November 2025

For sale in Australia perennial vegetables, heirloom vegetable seeds, edible herb plants, organic berry plants, and a few non-edible plants and things.  Everything has been grown organically by me.  

Maintaining my old for sale page wasn't working for me, so each month I will write a new blog post with an updated list of what I have for sale that month and include a link on my old for sale page. 

Vietnamese fish mint

For Sale: November 2025 

Small Bare Rooted Plants $5 each (unless otherwise stated): 

Everlasting onions 
Pineberry strawberry 
Virginian strawberry
Atilla alpine strawberry 
Jekkas thyme 
Spearmint 
100 yr old mint
Lavender mint 
Willow herb
Vietnamese fish mint
Vietnamese coriander
Variegated water parsley
Green water parsley (more vigorous stronger tasting version of the variegated form)
Asparagus (Variety: Purple) 
Asparagus (Variety: Precoce D'Argenteuil) 
Sweet Violet 
Water cress - well rooted cuttings
Brahmi/water hyssop (Bacopa monnieri) 
Water pepper 
Duck potato $3 each
Spider plant (you choose between variegated, green, or reverse variegated)  $3 each
Azolla $3 per scoop
Duckweed $3 per scoop 

Ancient Cultures: 

Milk kefir grains  $5 
Kombucha SCOBY  $5

Heirloom Vegetable Seeds:  $4 packet (unless otherwise stated) 

Immali corn
Superior coriander
Giant parsley
Purple hot mustard
Purple asparagus
Tomato Zolotoe Serdtse
Tomato Tommy Toe
Tomato Reisetoimate 
Tomato Woolly Kate 
Senposai
Huacatay
Carrot Black Nebula

Non edible things:

Aloe vera $5
String of pearls succulent - plant $5, cuttings $2
String of beans succulent (from Coober Pedy) - plant $5, cuttings  $2
Red jelly bean succulent  $5 
African violet leaf cutting (Variety: New Hampshire) $3 each
African violet leaf cutting (Variety: unnamed double light blue) $3 each

Candle mold 'skep' $10 each
Candle mold 'owl' $10 each 

Postage Prices: 

$12 for plants etc, or 
$3.50 if only buying seeds.  

I post the Monday after payment has cleared.

Owl candle

To order anything from the above list: 

Please send me an email saying what plants/seeds you would like and I will reply with prices/payment methods.  My email address will need to remove the the spaces, put @ instead of the word 'at' and . in place of the word 'dot': 

damien_beaumont at yahoo dot com dot au 

Photographs, binomial names, and descriptions of plants, and notes on how I grow them, can be found on my old for sale page.  Please note my old page has a lot of things not currently in season/not currently for sale.  The only things I have for sale this month are listed in this blog post above.