''Cassinia ochracea'' 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 ...

and is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to south-eastern New South Wales. It is an erect or spreading shrub with hairy stems, needle-shaped leaves and flat or rounded corymbs of up to four hundred flower heads.

Description

''Cassinia ochracea'' is an erect or spreading shrub that typically grows to a height of with its stems densely covered with cottony white hairs. The leaves are needle-shaped, long and about wide. The edges of the leaves are rolled under and the lower surface is densely covered with white, woolly hairs. The flower heads are long, each with four or five

florets This glossary of botanical terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts relevant to botany and plants in general. Terms of plant morphology are included here as well as at the more specific Glossary of plant morphology and Glossary o ...

surrounded by overlapping involucral bracts. Between 25 and 400 heads are arranged in flat or rounded corymbs. Flowering occurs from March to June and the achenes are deep reddish-brown, long with a pappus of 18 to 21 bristles long.

Taxonomy and naming

''Cassinia ochracea'' was first formally described in 2005 by Anthony Edward Orchard in '' Australian Systematic Botany'' from specimens collected south-west of Cooma in 2004. 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 ...

(''ochracea'') means "ochre-yellow".

Distribution

This species of ''Cassinia'' occurs on the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, mainly in

Kosciuszko National Park The Kosciuszko National Park () is a national park and contains mainland Australia's highest peak, Mount Kosciuszko, for which it is named, and Cabramurra, the highest town in Australia. Its borders contain a mix of rugged mountains and wildern ...

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q15560849 ochracea Asterales of Australia Flora of New South Wales Plants described in 2005