Hop-like flowers and fruit

Shrub to 3 metres high in dry sclerophyll forest. Leaves obovate to oblanceolate, to 3.5 cm long and 30 cm wide, apex acute and usually three-toothed, base attenuate or broadly cuneate, margins entire. Flowers solitary or in 3-6 flowered axillary or terminal cymes. Fruit is a capsule 3 or rarely 4-angled, 6-9 mm long sparsely hairy or sometimes not. These Dodonaeas all have hop-like flowers and fruit in thin paperlike membranes hence the common name of hop bush. Early European colonists in Australia used the papery, winged seed capsules as a substitute for true hops when brewing beer and making yeast. Dodonaea triangularis is a good screen plant, relatively fast growing and hardy, but suffers when waterlogged.

Photo: Robert Whyte

Seed collecting and propagation

Papery seed capsule with 3 or 4 wings at maturity in October to February. Sow fresh. Crush pods then immerse in boiling water for 30 seconds. Then refresh in iced water. Propagate by seed or cuttings.