Olearia ballii
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Mountain daisy | |
|---|---|
_(14240373994).jpg) | |
| Olearia ballii | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| Clade: | Tracheophytes |
| Clade: | Angiosperms |
| Clade: | Eudicots |
| Clade: | Asterids |
| Order: | Asterales |
| Family: | Asteraceae |
| Genus: | Olearia |
| Species: | O. ballii |
| Binomial name | |
| Olearia ballii | |
| Synonyms[1] | |
| |
Olearia ballii, commonly known as mountain daisy,[2] is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae and is endemic to Lord Howe Island. It is a dense shrub with crowded linear leaves and small, purplish and white, daisy-like inflorescences.
Olearia ballii is a dense shrub that typically grows to a height of up to 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in). It has crowded, more or less sessile, linear leaves 5–12 mm (0.20–0.47 in) long and 0.5–1.5 mm (0.020–0.059 in) wide with the edges rolled under and white, woolly hairs on the lower surface. The heads or daisy-like "flowers" are arranged singly in on the ends of the branchlets and are 15–20 mm (0.59–0.79 in) in diameter and sessile, with softly-hairy bracts forming an involucre at the base. Each head has twenty to thirty ray florets, the white petal-like ligules up to 8 mm (0.31 in) long with purple tips, surrounding about forty purplish disc florets. Flowering mostly occurs between October and March and the fruit is an achene about 3 mm (0.12 in) long, the pappus bristles about 2 mm (0.079 in) long.[2][3]