Petrophile nivea is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to southwestern Western Australia. It is a small shrub with crowded cylindrical, sharply-pointed leaves and more or less spherical heads of hairy white or cream-coloured flowers on the ends of branchlets.
Petrophile nivea is a shrub that typically grows to high, wide and has glabrous branchlets and leaves. The leaves are crowded, cylindrical, long, wide, straight, curved or S-shaped, and sharply-pointed. The flowers are arranged on the ends of branchlets in sessile, more or less spherical heads in diameter, with a few narrow egg-shaped involucral bracts at the base. The flowers are about long, white or cream-coloured and densely hairy. Flowering occurs from May to August and the fruit is a nut, fused with others in a spherical head long and wide.[1]
Petrophile nivea was first formally described in 2002 by Michael Clyde Hislop and Barbara Lynette Rye in the journal Nuytsia from material collected by Hislop near Warradarge in 1999.[2] The specific epithet (nivea) means "snow-white", referring to the flowers.[3]
This petrophile is only known from a single locality near Eneabba where it grows with other petrophiles in heathland.
Petrophile nivea classified as "Threatened Flora (Declared Rare Flora — Extant)" by the Department of Environment and Conservation (Western Australia).