Telopea oreades

The prominent position and striking colour of Telopea oreades and many of its relatives within the subtribe Embothriinae—both in Australia and South America—strongly suggest it is adapted to pollination by birds, and has been for over 60 million years. Birds recorded visiting the flowers for their nectar include red wattlebird (Anthochaera carunculata), eastern spinebill (Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris), crescent honeyeater (Phylidonyris pyrrhopterus), yellow-faced honeyeater (Lichenostomus chrysops), brown-headed honeyeater (Melithreptus brevirostris), white-naped honeyeater (Melithreptus lunatus) and silvereye (Zosterops lateralis). T. oreades has a central taproot and few lateral roots. Like most Proteaceae, it has fine proteoid roots that arise from larger roots. These are roots with dense clusters of short lateral rootlets that form a mat in the soil just below the leaf litter. They are particularly efficient at absorbing nutrients from nutrient-poor soils, including the phosphorus-deficient native soils of Australia. T. oreades has a swollen woody base largely under the soil known as a lignotuber, which stores energy and nutrients as a resource for rapid growth after a bushfire. The wet forests in which it grows seldom catch fire. When they do, the plant community becomes a more open sclerophyll woodland until slow-growing plants with larger leaves take over. New shoots grow from the lignotuber, which survives bushfire as the rest of the plant above ground is burnt. The seed also germinates and grows in post-bushfire soil, which is higher in nutrients and more open with fewer competing plant species. Waratah seeds are often eaten—and destroyed—by animals and do not travel far (several metres) from the parent plants.

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The Gippsland waratah was first formally described by the Victorian Government Botanist Ferdinand von Mueller in 1861 in Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae. The type material was collected in rugged mountainous country around Nungatta Creek, a tributary of the Genoa River in south-eastern New South Wales. Mueller had been surveying the mountainous eastern part of the state since the 1850s. The species name is said to be derived from the Ancient Greek oreos "mountain" and hence means "of or relating to a mountain". The proper word for "mountain" in Ancient Greek is however oros (ὄρος). The only alternative scientific name proposed was in 1891, when Otto Kuntze named it as Hylogyne oreades, but it was rejected as an illegitimate name. Common names applies to the species include Gippsland-, Victorian-, mountain-, and tree waratah. Telopea oreades is one of five species from southeastern Australia that make up the genus Telopea. No subspecies are recognised. It has been difficult to distinguish from the similar T. mongaensis, but microscopic analysis has revealed that T. oreades has features termed sclereids while T. mongaensis does not. The two are sister species, and their next closest relative is the Tasmanian waratah (T. truncata). A disjunct northern population of T. oreades grows together with T. mongaensis in the southern Monga Valley in southern New South Wales, with some hybrids reported. Crisp and Weston concluded that the two species for the most part did not hybridise there. However, a genetic study using microsatellites found there was extensive hybridisation, with much of the presumed pure T. oreades showing a close relation to T. mongaensis. The populations of waratahs are thought to have grown and shrunk with the ebb and flow of ice ages in the Pleistocene, finally stranding a population of T. oreades located alongside T. mongaensis as conditions suitable for waratahs changed in southeastern Australia. The genus lies in the subtribe Embothriinae, along with the tree waratahs (Alloxylon) from eastern Australia and New Caledonia, and Oreocallis and Chilean firetree (Embothrium coccineum) from South America. Almost all these species have red terminal flowers, and hence the subtribe's origin and floral appearance must predate the splitting of Gondwana into Australia, Antarctica, and South America over 60 million years ago.

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