Petrophile axillaris is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is a shrub with pinnately-divided, sharply-pointed leaves, and spherical heads of hairy pink or grey flowers.
Petrophile axillaris is a shrub that typically grows to a height of and has ribbed, hairy, grey or brown branchlets. The leaves are pinnately-divided to the midrib, long with twenty-five to seventy-six cylindrical, sharply-pointed lobes. The flowers are mostly arranged in leaf axils in more or less spherical heads long and wide, with elliptic to egg-shaped involucral bracts at the base. The flowers are long, pink or grey and hairy. Flowering mainly occurs from September to November and the fruit is a nut, fused with others in a spherical to oval head long.[1]
Petrophile axillaris was first formally described in 1855 by Carl Meissner in Hooker's Journal of Botany and Kew Garden Miscellany from material collected by James Drummond.[2] [3] The specific epithet (axillaris) means "axillary", referring to the flowers.[4]
This petrophile grows in sandy or gravelly limestone soils in near-coastal areas between Geraldton and Yalgorup National Park and disjunctly in the Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park in southwestern Western Australia.
Petrophile axillaris is classified as "not threatened" by the Western Australian Government Department of Parks and Wildlife.