Grevillea acrobotrya explained

Grevillea acrobotrya is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to the southwest of Western Australia. It is a prickly, spreading to erect shrub with egg-shaped to trowel-shaped leaves with sharply-tipped lobes, and white to cream-coloured flowers with smaller leaves at the base.

Description

Grevillea acrobotrya is a spreading to erect shrub that typically grows to a height of and has woolly-hairy branchlets, but glabrous flowering branchlets. Its leaves are egg-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, or trowel-shaped, long and wide with five to nine sharply-pointed lobes. The branches bearing flowers have smaller leaves that have three narrowly triangular, sharply pointed lobes and are up to about long. The flowers are arranged in more or less spherical groups on the ends of branches and in leaf axils, each flower on a pedicel long, the perianth white to cream-coloured, the limb chocolate-coloured and the pistil long. Flowering occurs in most months with a peak from June to September and the fruit is a smooth, oblong follicle mostly long.[1]

Taxonomy

Grevillea acrobotrya was first formally described in 1855 by Carl Meissner in Hooker's Journal of Botany and Kew Garden Miscellany based on material collected by James Drummond in the hinterland north of the Swan River.[2] [3] The specific epithet (acrobotrya) means "a bunch of grapes".[4]

Distribution and habitat

This grevillea grows in heathland between Eneabba and Badgingarra in the Geraldton Sandplains and Swan Coastal Plain biogeographic regions of south-western Western Australia.

Conservation status

Grevillea acrobotyra is listed as Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The species is threatened by continuous and severe land clearing for sand mining, agriculture and road construction.[5]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Grevillea acrobotrya . Australian Biological Resources Study, Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment: Canberra . 5 April 2023.
  2. Web site: Grevillea acrobotrya. APNI. 7 October 2020.
  3. Meisner . Carl . Hooker . William Jackson . New Proteaceae of Australia . Hooker's Journal of Botany and Kew Garden Miscellany . 1855 . 7 . 74–75 . 31 October 2020.
  4. Book: Sharr . Francis Aubi . George . Alex . Western Australian Plant Names and Their Meanings . 2019 . Four Gables Press . Kardinya, WA . 9780958034180 . 126 . 3rd.
  5. Keighery, G. . Makinson, R. . Monks, L. . 2020 . Grevillea acrobotrya . 2020 . e.T112645596A113307606 . 10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-2.RLTS.T112645596A113307606.en . 20 December 2023.