PlantFiles: Sea Urchin Hakea
Hakea petiolaris

This is another Hakea with unusual flowers. The pale pink flowers are in dense spherical clusters, with the creamy styles protruding, giving the flower-head the appearance of a small sea-urchin. The flowers grow in the leaf axils on old wood and the clusters of seed capsules are often found on bare branches.
Like all Hakeas, the seed are in hard woody capsules, which are held on the shrub indefinitely, but which open a few days after picking to release two winged seeds.
I grew two from seed and planted them in my garden. They have done very well, growing as slender upright shrubs, now about 3 metres tall. The glaucous foliage is attractive, but they took a long time before producing their first flowers. This year, both are flowering profusely and attracting the honeyeaters to their nectar.
The ripe seed capsules are also attractive to Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos.