Styphelia multiflora explained

Styphelia multiflora is a species of flowering plant in the family Ericaceae and is endemic to the southwest of Western Australia. It is a rigid shrub with crowded, sharply-pointed, linear to lance-shaped leaves, and white, tube-shaped flowers usually in groups in leaf axils.

Description

Styphelia multiflora is a stout, rigid shrub with sotly-hairy branches. Its leaves are crowded, linear to lance-shaped, concave, about long and sharply-pointed. The flowers are arranged in leaf axils in groups of 3, 4 or more on a short peduncle with bracts and bracteoles less than half as long as the sepals. The sepals are about long and narrow, the petals white and about long, forming a tube with lobes about as long as the petal tube.[1]

Taxonomy

This species was first formally described in 1810 by Robert Brown in his Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen.[2] [3] In 1824, Kurt Polycarp Joachim Sprengel transferred the species to Styphelia as S. multiflora in his Systema Vegetabilium. The specific epithet (multiflora) means "many-flowered".[4]

Distribution

This styphelia occurs in the Esperance Plains bioregion of south-western Western Australia.

Conservation status

Styphelia multiflora is listed as "Priority One" by the Government of Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, meaning that it is known from only one or a few locations which are potentially at risk.[5]

Notes and References

  1. Book: Bentham . George . Flora Australiensis . 4 . 1868 . Lovell Reeve & Co. . London . 221–222 . 21 February 2023.
  2. Web site: Leucopogon multiflorus. APNI. 21 February 2023.
  3. Book: Brown . Robert . Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen . 1810 . London . 542 . 21 February 2023.
  4. Book: Sharr . Francis Aubi . George . Alex . Western Australian Plant Names and Their Meanings . 2019 . Four Gables Press . Kardinya, WA . 9780958034180 . 256 . 3rd.
  5. Web site: Conservation codes for Western Australian Flora and Fauna. Government of Western Australia Department of Parks and Wildlife. 21 February 2023.