Grevillea neorigida explained

Grevillea neorigida is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to Western Australia. It is compact, spreading shrub with deeply-divided leaves, the end lobes linear and somewhat sharply-pointed, and clusters of creamy-brown to off-white flowers with a scarlet or orange-red style.

Description

Grevillea neorigida is a compact, spreading shrub that typically grows to a height of up to . Its leaves are long in outline but deeply divided with 3 to 9 linear lobes long and wide and somewhat sharply-pointed, with the edges rolled under, obscuring most of the lower surface. The flowers are arranged in clusters on one side of a rachis long. The flowers are creamy-brown to off-white, the style scarlet to orange-red and woolly- to shaggy-hairy on the outside, the pistil long. Flowering time depends on subspecies, and the fruit is a silky-hairy follicle long.[1]

Taxonomy

In 1994 Peter Olde and Neil Marriott described Grevillea rigida in The Grevillea Book from specimens collected east of Ravensthorpe in 1986, but the name was illegitimate because it had already been used for a fossil species.[2] In 2014, Ian Mark Turner changed the name to Grevillea neorigida in Annales Botanici Fennici.[3]

In the same publication, Olde and Marriott described two subspecies of G. rigida, and Turner has legitimised the names that are accepted by the Australian Plant Census:

Distribution and habitat

Grevillea neorigida grows in mallee-heath and tall shrubland on granitic loam soils in the Esperance Plains and Mallee bioregions of south-western Western Australia.[5] Subspecies distans occurs from the Fitzgerald River National Park and north almost to Ravensthorpe and west to Jerramungup and subsp. rigida mainly north and north-east of Ravensthrope.[7]

Conservation status

Both subspecies of G. neorigida are listed as "not threatened" by the Government of Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions.

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Grevillea neorigida . Australian Biological Resources Study, Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment: Canberra . 25 July 2022.
  2. Web site: Grevillea rigida. APNI. 25 July 2022.
  3. Web site: Grevillea neorigida. APNI. 25 July 2022.
  4. Web site: Grevillea neorigida subsp. distans. Australian Plant Census. 25 July 2022.
  5. Web site: Grevillea neorigida subsp. distans . Australian Biological Resources Study, Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment: Canberra . 25 July 2022.
  6. Web site: Grevillea neorigida subsp. neorigida. Australian Plant Census. 25 July 2022.
  7. Web site: Grevillea neorigida subsp. neorigida . Australian Biological Resources Study, Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment: Canberra . 25 July 2022.
  8. Book: Sharr . Francis Aubi . George . Alex . Western Australian Plant Names and Their Meanings . 2019 . Four Gables Press . Kardinya, WA . 9780958034180 . 3rd.