Melaleuca citrina, the bottle rinse

Sometimes called bottlebrush or Callistemon, Melaleuca citrina is an ornamental shrub native to Australia. Its spectacular, bottle-bottle-shaped blooms, lemony fragrance and great adaptability make it a real eye-catcher. More surprisingly, it is a pyrophyte plant, capable of using fire to ensure its reproduction.

Bottlebrush is an upright, bushy shrub. In its natural habitat, it can reach heights of up to eight meters. Cultivated outside its native range, Melaleuca citrina remains taller than melaleuca linearis. It is usually three meters high and wide.

Its reddish-brown bark is deeply fissured, with diamond-shaped cracks revealing yellow wood.

The alternate, lanceolate leaves are about seven centimetres long and greyish-green. When crumpled, they give off a lemony scent.

The flowers, too, give off a lemon scent. The bottlebrush blooms from autumn to winter, and can extend into spring depending on the climate. The inflorescences, grouped in cylindrical spikes ten centimeters long, are reminiscent of a bottlebrush, hence the plant's common name.

Each spike can bear up to 80 flowers, made up of numerous stamens (often more than forty per flower). The flowers are generally bright red in the botanical species, but can be pink or white in certain cultivars and hybrids.

The fruit of Melaleuca citrina is a hard, woody, cube-shaped capsule. This envelope is designed to open under the effect of heat. After a fire, the capsules release up to a hundred seeds, dispersed by the air currents generated by the smoke. This mechanism enables the plant to quickly colonize the soil after the fire has passed.

Bottlewash is not toxic to humans or pets. It poses no danger if touched or ingested, making it an ideal shrub for home gardens.