Melichrus hirsutus, commonly known as hairy melichrus,[1] is a species of flowering plant in the family Ericaceae and is endemic to a restricted part of eastern Australia. It is a shrub with many stems at the base, ascending, lance-shaped, hairy, sharply-pointed leaves, pink, tube-shaped flowers and fleshy, spherical, reddish-purple drupes.
Melichrus hirsutus is a shrub with many stems at its base, and that typically grows to a height of . Its leaves are ascending, lance-shaped, hairy, sharply-pointed, mostly long and wide on a broad, compressed petiole wide, with 9 to 11 obvious, parallel veins. The flowers are arranged singly in leaf axils, with nine to eleven strongly overlapping green and pinkish bracts up to long. The five sepals are papery, overlapping, lance-shaped, long, green and pink. The petals are red and pink, form a cup-shaped tube long and wide with widely egg-shaped lobes long and wide. Flowering occurs from March to August, and the fruit is a fleshy, reddish-purple, spherical drupe in diameter.[2] [3]
Melichrus hirsutus was first formally described in 2020 by Helen T. Kennedy and Ian Telford in the journal Telopea from an unpublished description by John Beaumont Williams.[4] The specific epithet (hirsutus) means covered with fairly coarse and stiff, long, erect, or ascending straight hairs.[5]
This species of Melichrus grows in forest on poor, sandy soils, in three nature reserves, north of Glenreagh in eastern New South Wales.[2] [1]
Melichrus hirsutus is listed as "endangered" under the Australian Government Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, and as "endangered" under the New South Wales Government Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016.