''Cassinia thinicola'' commonly known as sand everlasting, 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 coastal New South Wales. It is a compact shrub with hairy young stems, needle-shaped to slightly flattened leaves, and corymbs of up to 150 flower heads.

Description

''Cassinia thinicola'' is an erect, many-branched shrub that typically grows to a height of with its young stems covered with cottony and glandular hairs. The leaves are needle-shaped to slightly flattened, long and about wide. The upper surface of the leaves is more or less glabrous, the edges are rolled under and the lower surface is densely woolly-hairy. The flower heads are about long with five to seven cream-coloured

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 papery involucral bracts in four or five

whorls A whorl ( or ) is an individual circle, oval, volution or equivalent in a whorled pattern, which consists of a spiral or multiple concentric objects (including circles, ovals and arcs). Whorls in nature File:Photograph and axial plane floral d ...

. Between 100 and 150 heads are arranged in rounded corymbs. Flowering occurs in March and the achenes are about long with a pappus of about 23 bristles about long.

Taxonomy and naming

''Cassinia thinicola'' was first formally described in 2004 by Anthony Edward Orchard in '' Australian Systematic Botany'' from specimens collected at

Caves Beach Caves Beach is a locality on the Swansea peninsula between Lake Macquarie and the Pacific Ocean in Greater Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. It is part of the City of Lake Macquarie local government area. The locality is named for the larg ...

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 ...

(''thinicola'') means "dune-inhabiting".

Distribution

''Cassinia thinicola'' grows on old sand dunes and cliffs near the coast between Berowra and Forster in New South Wales.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q57321096

thinicola ''Thinicola'' is a genus of legume in the subfamily Faboideae with only one species, ''Thinicola incana'', native to Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the m ...

Asterales of Australia Flora of New South Wales Plants described in 2004