''Calocephalus lacteus'', commonly known as lemon beauty-heads, is a species of flowering plant in 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 ...

. It has yellow cylindrical shaped flowers and grey stems and grows in the eastern states of Australia

Description

''Calocephalus citreus'' is a perennial herb with upright, slender, light grey, fuzzy, slightly angular stems growing to about high. The leaves are arranged usually opposite, linear to lance-shaped, mostly long, wide and covered with short, matted, dense hairs and prominent veins. The heads are solitary, oblong to globose shaped, about long, lemon-coloured in bud, bright yellow in flower. The 8-11

bract In botany, a bract is a modified or specialized leaf, especially one associated with a reproductive structure such as a flower, inflorescence axis or cone scale. Bracts are usually different from foliage leaves. They may be smaller, larger, or of ...

s are flat,

conduplicate The following is a list of terms which are used to describe leaf morphology in the description and taxonomy of plants. Leaves may be simple (a single leaf blade or lamina) or compound (with several leaflets). The edge of the leaf may be regular o ...

, long with 2-3 florets per head. Flowering occurs from September to March and the fruit is a cypsela long, brown, and the upper surface covered in fine, feathery bristles.

Taxonomy and naming

''Calocephalus citreus'' was first formally described in 1832 by

Christian Friedrich Lessing Christian Friedrich Lessing (10 August 1809 – 13 March 1862) was a German botanist who was a native of Syców, Groß Wartenberg, Niederschlesien. He was a brother to painter Carl Friedrich Lessing (1808–1880), and a grandnephew of poet Gotthold ...

and the description was published in ''Synopsis Generum Compositarum''. The

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

(''citreus'') means "lemon-coloured".

Distribution and habitat

Lemon beauty-heads grows in low-lying areas in herbfields, dry forest and grassy woodland in eastern states of Australia and the Australian Capital Territory.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q15555130 Gnaphalieae Asterales of Australia Flora of New South Wales Flora of Victoria (state) Flora of South Australia Flora of Tasmania Flora of Queensland Flora of the Australian Capital Territory