Grevillea refracta, commonly known as silver-leaf grevillea, is a species of plant in the protea family and is native to northern Australia. It is a tree or shrub usually with pinnatipartite leaves and red and yellow flowers arranged on a branched, downcurved raceme.
Grevillea refracta is a tree or shrub that typically grows to a height of and wide. The leaves are long and pinnatipartite with up to 27 egg-shaped to elliptic or linear lobes long and wide. Sometimes there are elliptic to more or less linear leaves long and wide. The lower surface of the leaves is hairy. The flowers are arranged on one side of an often downcurved raceme with 2 to 6 branches long, the oldest flowers at the tips of the branches. The flowers are red and orange, yellow or pink, the pistil long. Flowering occurs from April to September and the fruit is a thick-walled, glabrous, elliptic to more or less spherical follicle long.[1] [2]
Grevillea refracta was first formally described in 1810 by the botanist Robert Brown in Transactions of the Linnean Society of London.[3] [4] The specific epithet (refracta) means "bent downwards".
In 1994, Peter Olde and Neil Marriott described two subspecies of G. refracta and the names are accepted by the Australian Plant Census:
Subspecies glandulifera grows in woodland and savanna and is found in the Ord River catchment in Western Australia, extending just into the far west of the Northern Territory. Subspecies refracta grows in woodland, savanna and Triodia communities and is widespread in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and north-western Queensland, including on nearby islands, north of about latitude 21°S.