The genus Anigozanthos (Kangaroo Paw) contains at least eleven species of distinctive Western Australian native plants. The oldest known specimens are of the Red Kangaroo Paw – Anigozanthos rufus – which are now in collections in Florence, Berlin, and Paris. They were collected in 1792 by the French botanist Labillardière, a member of Bruni d’Entrecasteaux’s expedition in search of the ships of his predecessor La Pérouse.

Labillardière was among a group of men who were put ashore near what is now the town of Esperance on the south-east coast of Western Australia. His subsequently published account explains how they crossed “a terrain entirely covered by sand, where we found vast areas absolutely stripped of vegetation… In these arid places grew a fine plant which resembled an iris … It formed, however, a new and very distinctive genus, principally on account of its irregular corolla. I gave it the name anigozanthos.”

He goes on to describe its appearance in some detail:
“The flowers do not have a calyx. The corolla takes the form of a tube divided on its edges into six equal parts, curving inwards; it is covered in reddish hairs. The capsule is roughly spherical and coloured like the flower on which it is mounted; it has three cells filled with a great number of angular seeds. The top of the stem is covered in reddish hairs like the flowers. I called this species anigozanthos rufa.”

Labillardière returned to France in 1796. His published account, which appeared in 1800, also contains the first European drawing of this distinctive flowering plant. His herbarium was later owned by an English botanist living in Paris, Philip Barker Webb. After Webb’s death in 1856, at least two of Labillardière’s specimens of the Red Kangaroo Paw were bequeathed to European institutions: the Museum of Natural History in the University of Florence, and the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. Another specimen collected by Labillardière in 1792 was acquired by the German botanist Carl Ludwig Willdenow; in 1812, he bequeathed it to the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum in Berlin (now part of the Free University of Berlin).

Another early specimen of the Red Kangaroo Paw is now in the Natural History Museum in London. It was collected in January 1802 by Robert Brown, the botanist who accompanied Matthew Flinders on his circumnavigation of Australia, at Lucky Bay east of Esperance – a beach recently judged to have the whitest sand in Australia.

A better-known species of Anigozanthos is the Red and Green Kangaroo Paw (Anigozanthos Manglesii). It grows in Noongar Country along the lower western coast of Western Australia, and has the Noongar name Kurulbrang. Its earliest appearance in European records was in 1833, when seeds were brought back from the Swan River Colony by James Stirling. Successfully grown by Robert Mangles (cousin of Stirling’s wife) at Whitmore Lodge, Berkshire, it was described, named, and illustrated by David Don in 1835. It was adopted as the state floral emblem for Western Australia in 1960, and appeared on stamps in 1962 and 1968.

References
Labillardière, Jacques. Relation du voyage a la recherche de la Pérouse, fait par ordre de l'Assemblée constituante, pendant les années 1791, 1792, et pendant la 1ère. et la 2de. année de la République Françoise (Paris: H. J. Jansen, 1800), vol. 1, pp. 409-10

Sweet, Robert. The British flower garden, (series the second): containing coloured figures & descriptions of the most ornamental and curious hardy flowering plants; or those that are somewhat tender ... (London: J. Ridgway, 1835), vol. 3, no. 265

Spooner, Amanda. “Anigozanthos manglesii D.Don – Mangles Kangaroo Paw” in:
Western Australian Herbarium (1998-). FloraBase – the Western Australian Flora. Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions. https://florabase.dpaw.wa.gov.au/browse/profile/1411