Baeckea imbricata, commonly known as heath myrtle, is a species of flowering plant in the family Myrtaceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is a shrub with elliptical to egg-shaped or round leaves and small white flowers with five to twelve stamens.
Baeckea imbricata is a shrub that typically grows to a height up to, sometimes to, and has flanged branchlets and grey, scaly bark. The leaves are elliptical to egg-shaped or round, long and wide on a petiole up to long. The flowers are in diameter and are borne singly in leaf axils, each flower on a pedicel usually long with bracteoles long that often persist until the flower opens. The sepals are oblong, long and the petals are white, more or less round and long. There are five to twelve stamens in groups of up to three. The ovary has two locules and the style is about long. The fruit is an oval capsule about long.[1]
Heath myrtle was first formally described in 1788 by Joseph Gaertner who gave it the name Jungia imbricata in De Fructibus et Seminibus Plantarum.[2] [3] In 1917, George Claridge Druce changed the name to Baeckea imbricata in the supplement to The Botanical Exchange Club and Society of the British Isles Report for 1916.[4] [5] The specific epithet (imbricata) means "overlapping".[6]
Baeckea imbricata grows in heathland in swampy places in near-coastal areas and on adjacent ranges from Cooloola National Park in south-eastern Queensland to Bawley Point in south-eastern New South Wales.