''Cassinia uncata'', commonly known as sticky cassinia, 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 native to inland New South Wales and the south-east of South Australia. It is an erect shrub with hairy young stems, narrow linear to needle-shaped leaves, and

heads A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple animals may no ...

of off-white to cream-coloured flowers arranged in rounded, almost conical

panicle A panicle is a much-branched inflorescence. (softcover ). Some authors distinguish it from a compound spike inflorescence, by requiring that the flowers (and fruit) be pedicellate (having a single stem per flower). The branches of a panicle are of ...

Description

''Cassinia uncata'' is an erect shrub that typically grows to a height of with woolly-hairy, olive-brown young stems. The leaves are narrow linear to needle-shaped, long and wide. The leaf upper surface of the leaves is wrinkled and slightly sticky, the edges are rolled under, the lower surface is densely woolly-hairy and there is a hooked tip on the end. The flower heads are long, surrounded by eighteen to twenty papery involucral bracts in four to six

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 25 and 150 heads are arranged in more or less conical panicles along the branches. Flowering occurs from December to July and the achenes are long with a pappus of about eighteen bristles.

Taxonomy and naming

''Cassinia uncata'' was first formally described in 1838 by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle from an unpublished description by Allan Cunningham and the description was published in ''

Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis ''Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis'' (1824–1873), also known by its standard botanical abbreviation ''Prodr. (DC.)'', is a 17-volume treatise on botany initiated by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle. De Candolle intended it as a summa ...

''. 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 ...

(''uncata'') means "hooked" or "bent inwards".

Distribution and habitat

This cassinia grows in woodland, mallee and scrub on the western slopes and plains of inland New South Wales and the south-east of South Australia.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q15560529 uncata Asterales of Australia Flora of New South Wales Flora of South Australia Plants described in 1838 Taxa named by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle