Acrotriche divaricata is a species of flowering plant in the family Ericaceae and is endemic to New South Wales. It is a bushy shrub with sharply-pointed lance-shaped leaves and spikes of 3 to 5 green or cream-coloured flowers and spherical, red drupes.
Acrotriche divaricata is an erect, spreading, bushy shrub that typically grows to a height of, its leaves at about 90° to the stem. The leaves are usually lance-shaped, sometimes oblong to elliptic, long, wide and sharply-pointed. The flowers are arranged in spikes with 3 to 5 green or cream-coloured flowers with bracteoles long at the base of the sepals. The sepals are long and the petals are joined at the base forming a tube long, the lobes long. Flowering mostly occurs between July and September and the fruit is a more or less spherical, fleshy, red drupe about in diameter.[1] [2] [3]
Acrotriche divaricata was first formally described in 1810 by Robert Brown in his Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen.[4] [5] The specific epithet (aggregata) means "widely spreading".[6]
This species of Acrotriche is often found in sheltered forest or in rainforest, and is mostly seen growing on the coast and ranges of New South Wales south of Newcastle. A similar species Acrotriche leucocarpa with pearly white fruit, occurs in Victoria.[7] [8]