Styphelia cuspidata is a species of flowering plant in the family Ericaceae and is endemic to the central Queensland coast. It is a shrub with densely hairy young branchlets, egg-shaped to lance-shaped leaves with the narrower end towards the base, and white, bell-shaped flowers that are bearded inside.
Styphelia cuspidata is a shrub that typically grows to a height of, its young branchlets densely hairy. The leaves are egg-shaped to lance-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, long and wide on a petiole about long. The leaves point upwards and have a sharply-pointed tip. The flowers are arranged in two to four upper leaf axils on a peduncle up to long, with egg-shaped to round bracts about long and bracteoles long. The sepals are lance-shaped, long and the petals white and form a bell-shaped tube long with lobes long and densely hairy inside. Flowering occurs in most months and the fruit is an elliptic drupe long.[1] [2]
This species was first formally described in 1810 by Robert Brown who gave it the name Leucopogon cuspidatus in Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen.[3] [4] In 1824, Kurt Polycarp Joachim Sprengel transferred the species to Styphelia as S. cuspidata in Systema Vegetabilium.[5] The specific epithet (cuspidata) means "cuspidate".[6]
This leucopogon grows in shrubland on hillsides and mountains on the central Queensland coast between Hook Island in the north and Great Keppel Island and Mount Wheeler in the south.