Patersonia rudis, commonly known as hairy flag, is a species of plant in the iris family Iridaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is a tufted, rhizome-forming perennial herb with linear to sword-shaped leaves and violet tepals.
Patersonia rudis is a tufted perennial herb that typically grows to a height of and forms a rhizome covered by sticky leaf bases. Its leaves are linear to sword-shaped and long, striated and softly-hairy near the base. The flowering scape is long and velvety with the sheath enclosing the flowers lance-shaped, blackish, prominently veined and long. The outer tepals are violet, egg-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, long and wide, the hypanthium tube long and softly-hairy. Flowering occurs from October to December and the fruit is an oval capsule long, containing black seeds.[1]
Patersonia rudis was first described in 1846 by Stephan Endlicher in Lehmann's Plantae Preissianae.[2] [3] The specific epithet (rudis) means "rough" or "wild".[4]
In 1986, David Alan Cooke and Alex George described two subspecies in the Flora of Australia and the names are accepted by the Australian Plant Census:
Subspecies rudis grows in woodland and forest on the Darling Range between New Norcia and Dwellingup in the Jarrah Forest and Swan Coastal Plain biogeographic regions of south-western Western Australia but subspecies velutina grows in more arid woodland and shrubland further east near Southern Cross and Coolgardie in the Avon Wheatbelt and Coolgardie bioregions.
Both subspecies of P. rudis are classified as "not threatened" by the Western Australian Government Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions.