Olearia calcarea, commonly known as limestone daisy bush,[1] is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae and is endemic to southern continental Australia. It is a shrub with egg-shaped or broadly spoon-shaped leaves with toothed edges, and white and yellow, daisy-like inflorescences.
Olearia calcarea is a shrub that typically grows to a height of up to . It has scattered, broadly spoon-shaped to egg-shaped leaves with the narrower end towards the base, long and wide, with toothed edges. The leaves are more or less sessile, both surfaces a similar colour. The heads are arranged singly on the ends of branchlets and are more or less sessile, in diameter. Each head or daisy-like "flower," has a bell-shaped involucre long, and eight to twelve ray florets, the petal-like ligule oblong, pale purple to white, and long, surrounding ten to fifteen yellow disc florets. Flowering occurs from May to October, and the fruit is a silky-hairy achene, the pappus with 74 to 84 bristles in two rows.[2] [3]
Olearia calcarea was first formally described in 1867 by George Bentham in Flora Australiensis from an unpublished description by Ferdinand von Mueller.[4] [5] The specific epithet (calcarea) means "limy", referring to the soil.[6]
Limestone daisy bush grows in on mallee woodland on limestone-rich soils in southern Western Australia, southern South Australia, far north-western Victoria and west of Nymagee in far western New South Wales.