''Conostylis argentea'' is a rhizomatous, tufted perennial plant species in the family

Haemodoraceae Haemodoraceae is a family of perennial herbaceous flowering plants with 14 genera and 102 known species. It is sometimes known as the "bloodwort family". Primarily a Southern Hemisphere family, they are found in South Africa, Australia and New ...

, endemic to the south-west of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

. In July and August it produces white to cream flowers in the species' native range.

Description

According to

FloraBase ''FloraBase'' is a public access web-based database of the flora of Western Australia. It provides authoritative scientific information on 12,978 taxa, including descriptions, maps, images, conservation status and nomenclatural details. 1,272 alie ...

, the terete leaves are 8 to 13 cm long and about 1 mm wide. The leaves have neither bristles nor hairs on the leaf margin nor on the surface of the leaf, but according to

Flora of Australia The flora of Australia comprises a vast assemblage of plant species estimated to over 30,000 vascular and 14,000 non-vascular plants, 250,000 species of fungi and over 3,000 lichens. The flora has strong affinities with the flora of Gondwana, ...

online, the leaves are flat and villous (covered in long soft hairs). There is no scape. The inflorescence is subtended by a bract 10-12 mm long, with one flower. The floral bracts are 10-12 mm long and have sessile pedicels. The radially symmetric flowers are 35-65 mm long, with hairy perianths, are white to cream, with six roughly equal tepals. There are six stamens, all at one level, having filaments which are 7-8 mm long. The anthers have no appendages and are 5.5-5.7 mm long. The style is 25-38 mm long. The plant flowers in July/August.

Distribution

It is found in the Coolgardie,

Avon Wheatbelt The Avon Wheatbelt is a bioregion in Western Australia. It has an area of . It is considered part of the larger Southwest Australia savanna ecoregion. Geography The Avon Wheatbelt bioregion is mostly a gently undulating landscape with low reli ...

, Mallee and

Esperance plains Esperance Plains, also known as Eyre Botanical District, is a biogeographic region in southern Western Australia on the south coast between the Avon Wheatbelt and Hampton bioregions, and bordered to the north by the Mallee region. It is a pl ...

IBRA bioregion(s), in the South-west Botanical Province.

Taxonomy

It was first described in 1961 by

John Green John Michael Green (born August 24, 1977) is an American author, YouTube Content creation, content creator, podcaster, and philanthropist. His books have more than 50 million copies in print worldwide, including ''The Fault in Our Stars'' ( ...

as a subspecies, ''Conostylis androstemma'' subsp. ''argentea''.Green, J.W. (1961), The Genus Conostylis R.Br. II. Taxonomy. ''Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales'' 85(3): 367. In 1987,

Stephen Hopper Stephen Donald Hopper AC FLS FTSE (born 18 June 1951) is a Western Australian botanist. He graduated in Biology, specialising in conservation biology and vascular plants. Hopper has written eight books, and has over 200 publications to his n ...

raised it to species status as ''Conostylis argentea''.

References

External links

''Conostylis'' Esperance Wildflowers
(Photographs & descriptions of six ''Conostylis'' species, including ''C. argentea'') Commelinales of Australia Angiosperms of Western Australia Plants described in 1961 Taxa named by Stephen Hopper argentea {{WesternAustralia-plant-stub