Cryptandra exilis, commonly known as slender pearlflower,[1] is a species of flowering plant in the family Rhamnaceae and is endemic to Tasmania. It is a small, straggly, low-growing shrub with linear leaves and tube-shaped white or cream-coloured flowers arranged in small groups on the ends of branches.
Cryptandra exilis is a shrub that typically grows to a height of up to and has slender, low-lying or straggly stems. Its leaves are arranged in small bundles on short side-branches and are linear with the edges rolled under and long. The flowers are usually arranged in groups of 2 to 6 on the ends of the main branches with dark brown bracts at the base, half as long as the sepal tube. The sepals are white or cream-coloured and joined at the base, forming a densely hairy tube more than long with lobes about long. The petals form a hood over the stamens and the style is about long. Flowering occurs from September to May, and the fruit is a capsule about long.[2]
Cryptandra exilis was first formally described in 1991 by Dennis Ivor Morris in Aspects of Tasmanian Botany - a tribute to Winifred Curtis from specimens collected by Tony Moscal in 1980.[3] The specific epithet (exilis) means "small" or "weak".[4]
Slender pearlflower grows in heathy or shrubby forest from Cape Barren Island to the Tasman Peninsula on the east coast of Tasmania.