Petrophile diversifolia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Petrophile diversifolia | |
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| In Mount Barker | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| Clade: | Tracheophytes |
| Clade: | Angiosperms |
| Clade: | Eudicots |
| Order: | Proteales |
| Family: | Proteaceae |
| Genus: | Petrophile |
| Species: | P. diversifolia |
| Binomial name | |
| Petrophile diversifolia | |
| Synonyms[1] | |
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Petrophile diversifolia is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to southwestern Western Australia. It is a shrub with pinnate, sharply-pointed leaves, and oval heads of densely hairy, white or creamy-white flowers.
Petrophile diversifolia is a shrub that typically grows to a height of 0.7–3 m (2 ft 4 in – 9 ft 10 in) and has hairy branchlets that become glabrous with age. Its young leaves are soft, hairy, fern-like and often reddish. Adult leaves are glabrous, pinnate, bipinnate or tripinnate, 30–110 mm (1.2–4.3 in) long on a petiole 6–26 mm (0.24–1.02 in) long, with mostly between thirty-five and fifty-five sharply-pointed pinnae. The flowers are arranged in oval heads about 20 mm (0.79 in) long on a peduncle 10–20 mm (0.39–0.79 in) long, with egg-shaped involucral bracts at the base. The flowers are 10–12 mm (0.39–0.47 in) long, hairy, creamy-white or white. Flowering occurs from September to December and the fruit is a nut, fused with others in an oval to cylindrical head up to 30 mm (1.2 in) long.[2][3]
Taxonomy
Petrophile diversifolia was first formally described in 1810 by Robert Brown in the Transactions of the Linnean Society of London.[4][5] The specific epithet (diversifolia) means "different-leaved", referring to the variably-shaped leaves.[6]