''Acanthocladium dockeri'' is a critically endangered species of the family

Asteraceae The family Asteraceae, alternatively Compositae, consists of over 32,000 known species of flowering plants in over 1,900 genera within the order Asterales. Commonly referred to as the aster, daisy, composite, or sunflower family, Compositae w ...

that belongs to the

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

genus ''Acanthocladium''. It is commonly known as spiny everlasting or spiny daisy. It is native to

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, and is found around the

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

n town of Laura.

Description

The spiny everlasting is a woody

perennial A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wide ...

shrub A shrub (often also called a bush) is a small-to-medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees ...

with spines at branch ends, covered in short white hair. It bears oblong, bumpy fruit. Spiny everlasting was presumed extinct in 1992, having suffered habitat loss from clearance for winter crops, but various colonies of it have been found around Laura, near the

Spencer Gulf The Spencer Gulf is the westernmost and larger of two large inlets (the other being Gulf St Vincent) on the southern coast of Australia, in the state of South Australia, facing the Great Australian Bight. It spans from the Cape Catastrophe and ...

Homonym

In 1883,

William Mitten William Mitten (30 November 1819 – 20 July 1906), was an English pharmaceutical chemist and authority on bryophytes who has been called "the premier bryologist of the second half of the nineteenth century". He built up a collection of some ...

used the same name, ''Acanthocladium'', to refer to a group of mosses, now in the family

Sematophyllaceae Sematophyllaceae is a family of moss Mosses are small, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic division Bryophyta (, ) '' sensu stricto''. Bryophyta (''sensu lato'', Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryophytes, wh ...

. Several dozen species of mosses were described and place in this genus before it was realized that Mittenn's name represented an illegitimate

homonym In linguistics, homonyms are words which are homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of pronunciation), or homophones (equivocal words, that share the same pronunciation, regardless of spelling), or both. Using this definition, ...

. The moss genus has since been renamed ''

Wijkia ''Wijkia'' is a genus of moss Mosses are small, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic division Bryophyta (, ) '' sensu stricto''. Bryophyta ('' sensu lato'', Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryophytes, which c ...

'' H.A. Crum.Tropicos Acanthocladium Mitt.
/ref>

References

Bibliography

* * Gnaphalieae Monotypic Asteraceae genera Flora of South Australia Taxa named by Ferdinand von Mueller {{Gnaphalieae-stub