Cryptandra pungens is a species of flowering plant in the family Rhamnaceae and is endemic to the southwest of Western Australia. It is an erect, slender, spiny shrub that typically grows to a height of with many short branches ending with thin spines. Its leaves mostly in bundles and are long. The flowers are white, each on a pedicel long with minute, overlapping brown bracts at the base. The sepals are about long and joined at the base to form a broadly bell-shaped tube, with lobes half as long as the tube. Flowering occurs from May to November.[1] The species was first formally described in 1845 by Ernst Gottlieb von Steudel in Lehmann's Plantae Preissianae from specimens collected in sandy forest near Perth.[2] [3] The specific epithet (pungens) means "ending in a sharp, hard point".[4]
Cryptandra pungens grows on coastal limestone, granite outcrops, sandplains and hills in the Avon Wheatbelt, Coolgardie, Esperance Plains, Geraldton Sandplains, Jarrah Forest, Mallee and Swan Coastal Plain bioregions of south-western Western Australia. It is listed as "not threatened" by the Western Australian Government Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions.