Right now, on the country
In flower near Adelaide
Fifteen conservation and national parks, from the samphire coast to the mallee fringe, keep a flowering calendar you can go and stand in. Pick your month below and see exactly which park to visit — and what you'll find when you get there.
Looking for the wider seasonal picture — birds, mammals, the ecosystems themselves? Browse the full guide library.
This season
Winter — the green
The wet half of the Mediterranean year, roughly June to August, when the roaring-forties fronts finally get through, the plains and hills turn green, the range-front creeks run again, and the whole system quietly banks water for the dry it already knows is coming.
This page personalises to your own month and lets you filter by park with JavaScript switched on. Without it, here's what's in flower this month across all 15 parks in the guide.
In flower now — and where to see it
Beaked Hakea Hakea rostrata
Creamy, spidery flower clusters on a needle-leaved shrub — another headline spring shrub named in the park's brochure.
Blue Boronia Cyanothamnus coerulescens
A genuinely blue flower in a heathland of reds and yellows — small four-petalled stars worth hunting for near the Coastal Lookout.
Bluff Grass-tree Xanthorrhoea quadrangulata
South Australia's own rock grass-tree, the longer-trunked, four-sided-leaved cousin of the more familiar yacca — a tall, dark flower spike erupting from steep, rocky slopes, with flowering timing that varies markedly from park to park and year to year.
Common Heath Epacris impressa
South Australia's other floral-emblem contender (and Victoria's actual one) — dense sprays of tubular pink-to-red-to-white bells strung along wiry heath stems, often flowering longer through the year than almost anything else in these parks.
Cranberry Heath Styphelia humifusa
A sprawling ground heath with narrow red tubular flowers tucked into the foliage, followed by edible reddish berries — look low, close to the leaf litter.
Deep Creek Correa Correa eburnea
The park's own local endemic, described from and centred on Deep Creek — nodding, pale bell flowers in the sheltered gullies; look for it and you're looking at a plant that grows almost nowhere else on Earth.
Desert Banksia Banksia ornata
The park's totem shrub — squat, grey-leaved banksias whose fat, honey-gold flower cones age to rust are what the 'almost pure sand heath' at Cox Scrub is built from.
Dwarf Greenhood Pterostylis nana
The commonest greenhood on the park's shaded slopes — small, hooded, green-and-white striped flowers that stand in little colonies through winter into spring, exactly as flagged in the park's own seasonal walking notes.
Flame Heath Stenanthera conostephioides
Flame Heath earns its name: small tubular flowers flare red-and-orange along wiry stems through the heathy understorey, often the standout colour hit of the cooler, quieter months.
Golden Wattle Acacia pycnantha
South Australia's floral emblem, and by a wide margin the most widely recorded wildflower across these hills — fragrant golden ball-flowers smother wattle scrub and woodland edges from late winter into spring, opening the flowering year before almost anything else.
Lavender Grevillea Grevillea lavandulacea
Spidery pink-red 'toothbrush' flowers held out from grey, lavender-like foliage — a reliable honeyeater magnet through most of the cooler half of the year.
Lemon-scented Sun-orchid Thelymitra antennifera
Rabbit-eared, lemon-scented sun-orchid flowers that only open fully in warm sunshine — time a visit for the middle of a still, sunny spring day and look for the gold.
Maroonhood Pterostylis pedunculata
Maroonhood: one of the commonest greenhood orchids of these hills, its hooded green-and-maroon flowers often standing in loose colonies on shaded, damp ground through late winter and spring.
Myrtle Wattle Acacia myrtifolia
A smaller, paler wattle than golden wattle, with flattened myrtle-like leaves and pale scented flower-balls along the stringybark understorey from midwinter into spring.
Native Fuchsia (Common Correa) Correa reflexa
Dangling bell-shaped tubular flowers in the coastal heath, flowering right through the dry-season lull when little else is out — a favourite of nectar-feeding birds.
Native Lilac (Purple Coral-pea) Hardenbergia violacea
A twining pea vine that drapes purple over shrubs and rock along the trail edges in late winter and spring — one of the most eye-catching splashes of colour on the gorge slopes.
Nodding Greenhood Pterostylis nutans
The classic hooded greenhood, its flower nodding forward on the stem — one of the park's most frequently logged orchids through autumn and winter.
Red Parrot-pea Dillwynia hispida
A bristly-leaved shrub smothered in small orange-red pea-flowers, another of the gorge's common egg-and-bacon peas flowering through winter-spring.
Red-banded Greenhood Pterostylis sanguinea
A hooded green-and-maroon greenhood of the winter woodland floor, first formally described from a Mount Lofty Ranges specimen — genuinely common here through the cooler months.
Rock Correa Correa glabra
A native fuchsia of the quartzite cliffs and rock ledges around the falls — its bell-shaped, nodding tubular flowers hang from wiry shrubs on the exposed gorge slopes through the cooler months.
Shrubby Samphire Tecticornia arbuscula
The tallest, bushiest samphire here (to 2 m), forming dense shrubland along the tidal creek edges of the Bird Sanctuary — the last stronghold of the nationally listed slender-billed (samphire) thornbill.
Silver Banksia Banksia marginata
The Mount Lofty Ranges' only banksia — pale, cylindrical flower spikes over silver-backed leaves, feeding honeyeaters and cockatoos through the cooler months in almost every park on this list.
Twining Fringe-lily Thysanotus patersonii
A slender twiner that threads through low shrubs, its purple flowers fringed like tiny fireworks — open only for a few hours around midday, so a morning walk is the time to look.
Veined Helmet Orchid Corybas diemenicus
Tiny (2 cm) maroon flowers shaped like a helmet or gumnut, growing in dense colonies flat on the ground — a Friends of Black Hill & Morialta favourite spotted on the park's shaded gully tracks after autumn rain.
Wallflower Orchid (Donkey Orchid) Diuris orientis
Yellow flowers with the unmistakable long 'donkey-ear' petals, streaked red-brown to purple — one of the easiest ground orchids for a beginner to recognise on Morialta's spring walks.
Yellow Gland-flower Adenanthos terminalis
Odd tubular red-and-yellow flowers tucked in feathery grey foliage, flagged on the Scrubland Walk stop.
Every park in this guide: Aldinga Scrub Conservation Park · Belair National Park · Black Hill Conservation Park & Anstey Hill Recreation Park · Cleland Conservation Park · Cox Scrub Conservation Park · Deep Creek National Park · Kaiserstuhl Conservation Park · Mark Oliphant Conservation Park · Morialta Conservation Park · Onkaparinga River National Park · Para Wirra Conservation Park · Sandy Creek Conservation Park · Scott Creek Conservation Park · St Kilda & the Adelaide International Bird Sanctuary · Sturt Gorge Recreation Park.
This season
In flower now — and where to see it
Nothing in the guide is tagged for that month and park together — try "All parks", or a neighbouring month.
Reading this guide honestly
Flowering times are indicative — they shift with the season, and cultivation timing (State Flora) can differ from wild timing. Where State Flora's catalogue season disagreed with multiple parks' documented field records, the field record was preferred and the catalogue treated as a secondary (cultivated, medium-confidence) data point.
Want it in your own garden or on your verge, not just in a park? Ask for indigenous, local-provenance stock at State Flora, the SA Government's own native-plant nursery — the right local seed source for revegetation, not just a garden centre.
Flowering colour and season cross-checked against the State Flora Nursery Catalogue (Department for Environment and Water, South Australia) where a species is indigenous to the Adelaide/Southern Lofty (SL) botanical region. Site notes and park-specific flowering windows are drawn from National Parks SA park brochures and management plans, Green Adelaide, Nature Play SA, the Friends-of-Parks volunteer groups for each park, and public occurrence records (iNaturalist, Atlas of Living Australia).