Symbols matter. Shaking hands doesn’t really achieve anything but it’s a symbol that you’re happy to meet or greet someone, just as the colours we wear send a message about what we think is important.

Many of us deliberately wore purple yesterday to signify our support for International Women’s Day. Next Friday, many of us will wear green to lay claim to some Irish heritage or, at least to justify, a glass of Guinness.

Countries and cities have symbols too. Australia’s official symbol is a coat of arms propped up by a kangaroo and emu (as if that could ever happen) but they are two creatures unique to this continent. They’re a symbol of something that makes us different, even if they’ve been usurped by the far more lively boxing kangaroo.

Our national flower is the wattle -and it says Australia to the rest of the world, thanks in no small part to Monty Python’s poetry: “This is the wattle, the emblem of our land. You can put it in a bottle or hold it in your hand.”

And Brisbane’s is the poinsettia – magnificent in bloom but barely recognised anymore as symbolic of our city and, like the wattle, introduced to Australia.

It might seem a small and insignificant step but the Lord Mayor’s invocation to identify an additional floral emblem is also an invitation for us to think about our identity.

If all goes well, this city will have attention like it’s never had before when the Olympics and Paralympics come to town in 2032. We want it to be favourable – the trains need to run on time, the stadiums need to have smooth entries and exits and the athletes, as they always do in the Games, have to thrill the world.

Cameras will showcase our beauty – our river with its banks lined with great paths, fine food and entertainment; our mountain backdrop that creates a green curtain over the setting sun and our neglected bay islands.

The world will be hungry to know more about Brisbane – and that’s what we want.

So it’s right to tell them how our important symbols are adopted. In the case of the poinsettia, it was chosen in the 1920s as our floral emblem even though it was native to Mexico. A century on, this is hard to comprehend. Yes, we did identify with another country but it was Great Britain, certainly not Mexico.

So it’s only right we should turn our mind to our floral emblem along with some other things we use to symbolise our city.

My vote goes to the grevillea. It’s native to Australia and grows bountifully in this part of the country. It comes in multiple colours, will survive hardy conditions, flowers all year around and is attractive to both birds and bees.

And what’s important to me is that it’s also easy to grow even through the inevitable dry spell we will endure between now or even during the Games. Brown thumbs apparently won’t kill the grevillea.

Its richness with nectar made it a foodstuff for the First Nations people who, it is said, used it to flavour water – a sort of natural lemonade without all the sugar and carbon character of modern soft drinks.

But while we’re thinking of symbols, we should think of a few others – what’s our city tree? How about a song other than Streets of Your Town.

It’s inevitable we will be thinking about some place names over the next decade, replacing names that represent the worst aspects of our colonial past with names that reflect the names used before Sir George Bowen settled here and created our first government.

This is work that seems trivial and that was my response when I first heard of the quest for a new floral emblem. But symbols, like words, matter. How we represent ourselves and our city governs how we behave and how others see us.

So I say go the Grevillia.

“This is the Grev,
The emblem of our city,
You can plant it in your garden,
Or use it in a ditty.”