Leucopogon diversifolius is a species of flowering plant in the heath family Ericaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is an erect shrub with more or less glabrous young branchlets, spirally arranged, erect, broadly egg-shaped, elliptic or more or less circular leaves, and white, broadly bell-shaped flowers sometimes with a pink tinge.
Leucopogon diversifolius is an erect shrub that typically grows up to about high and wide with a single stem at the base. The leaves are spirally arranged and point upwards, egg-shaped to elliptic or more or less circular, long and wide on a petiole long. The flowers are arranged in groups of 3 to 10, long on the ends of branches and in upper leaf axils, with egg-shaped bracts long and similar bracteoles long. The sepals are egg-shaped, long and tinged with purple near the tip, the petals white and joined at the base to form a broadly bell-shaped tube long, the lobes long and often tinged with pink. Flowering mainly occurs from May to July and the fruit is a cylindrical drupe long.[1] [2]
This leucopogon as was first formally described in 2009 by Michael Clyde Hislop who gave it the name Leucopogon heterophyllus in the journal Nuytsia from specimens he collected near Munglinup in 2007, but that name was illegitimate because it had already been used for a different species, now known as Leucopogon fasciculatus.[3] [4] In 2015, Hislop changed the name to Leucopogon diversifolius.[5] The specific epithet (diversifolius) means "various-leaved", referring to the variable leaf morphology of this species.[6]
Leucopogon diversifolius grows in the shrub layer of mallee woodlands and occurs mainly between Ravensthorpe, Lake King and Cascade in the Esperance Plains and Mallee bioregions in south-western Western Australia.
Leucopogon diversifolius is classified as "not threatened" by the Western Australian Government Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions