Goodenia connata, commonly known as cup velleia, is a species of flowering plant in the family Goodeniaceae, and is found in all mainland states and territories of Australia. It is a glabrous annual herb with a rosette of leaves at the base, and ascending flowering stems with yellow, brownish-yellow or white flowers, often with mauve markings.
Goodenia connata is a glabrous annual herb with finely toothed to lyre-shaped pinnatipartite leaves long and wide. The flowers are borne on a glabrous, erect flowering stem tall, the bracteoles joined to form a cup in diameter, each flower on a pedicel long. The flowers are yellow, brownish-yellow or white, often with mauve markings. The sepals are joined at the base forming a tube long, the lower lobes of the corolla are long with short, narrow wings. Flowering mainly occurs from September to January and the fruit is a compressed oval capsule long.[1]
This species was first formally described in 1854 by Ferdinand von Mueller who gave it the name Velleia connata in Transactions of the Philosophical Society of Victoria, from specimens collected near the junction of the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers. In 2020, Kelly Anne Shepherd transferred the species to Goodenia as G. connata in the journal PhytoKeys.
Goodenia connata occurs in all continental Australian mainland states and territories. In New South Wales it is widespread in arid and semi-arid regions in the west of that state. In Victoria it is found in the far north-west on sand dunes. In South Australia in grows on sandy soils usually in mulga or triodia grassland and has a widespread but disjunct distribution. It grows on rocky ranges or hills in the southern half of the Northern Territory[2] and in the Central Ranges, Coolgardie, Great Sandy Desert, Great Victoria Desert, Little Sandy Desert, Murchison and Pilbara bioregions of inland Western Australia.