''Darwinia wittwerorum'', commonly known as Wittwer's mountain bell, is a plant in the myrtle family

Myrtaceae Myrtaceae, the myrtle family, is a family of dicotyledonous plants placed within the order Myrtales. Myrtle, pōhutukawa, bay rum tree, clove, guava, acca (feijoa), allspice, and eucalyptus are some notable members of this group. All speci ...

and is endemic to a small area in Western Australia. An erect, spindly shrub with fine leaves and hanging groups of flowers surrounded by leaf-like

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, it is one of the darwinias known as mountain bells.

Description

Wittwer's darwinia is an erect shrub with a single stem growing to a height of . The leaves are well spaced along the branches, linear in shape, triangular in cross-section, long and less than wide. The flowers hang in groups of 5 to 9 surrounded by large, leaf like bracts. The inner bracts are elliptic to egg-shaped, long, wide and partly cream and partly pink. The outer bracts are cream-coloured and linear in shape. The flowers are cream-coloured and each has ten

stamen The stamen (plural ''stamina'' or ''stamens'') is the pollen-producing reproductive organ of a flower. Collectively the stamens form the androecium., p. 10 Morphology and terminology A stamen typically consists of a stalk called the filame ...

s and a style with a brush on the end. Flowering occurs from August to November.

Taxonomy

The first formal description of ''D. wittwerorum'' was published by

Neville Marchant Neville Graeme Marchant (born 1939) is a retired Western Australian botanist. He was formerly the Director of the Western Australian Herbarium. Marchant began working for the Western Australian Herbarium at the age of 15, as a laboratory assista ...

and

Greg Keighery Greg is a masculine given name, and often a shortened form of the given name Gregory. Greg (more commonly spelled " Gregg") is also a surname. People with the name *Greg Abbott (disambiguation), multiple people *Greg Abel (born 1961/1962), Canadi ...

in 1980 in the journal '' Nuytsia''. 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 ...

(''wittwerorum'') honours Magda and Ernst Wittwer.

Distribution and habitat

This darwinia is currently only known from eight populations in the lower part of the

Stirling Range The Stirling Range or Koikyennuruff is a range of mountains and hills in the Great Southern region of Western Australia, south-east of Perth. It is over wide from west to east, stretching from the highway between Mount Barker and Cranb ...

in the Esperance Plains and Jarrah Forest

biogeographic regions A biogeographic realm or ecozone is the broadest biogeographic division of Earth's land surface, based on distributional patterns of terrestrial organisms. They are subdivided into bioregions, which are further subdivided into ecoregions. De ...

, where it grows in open mallee over scrub.

Conservation

''Darwinia wittwerorum'' is classified as " Threatened Flora (Declared Rare Flora — Extant)" by the Western Australian Government

Department of Parks and Wildlife The Department of Parks and Wildlife (DPaW) was the department of the Government of Western Australia responsible for managing lands described in the ''Conservation and Land Management Act 1984'' and implementing the state's conservation and e ...

and a recovery plan has been prepared. It has also been listed as "Endangered" (EN) under the Australian Government Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) "due to fragmentation and limited geographic range."

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q15397338 wittwerorum Endemic flora of Western Australia Endangered flora of Australia Rosids of Western Australia Myrtales of Australia Plants described in 1980 Taxa named by Gregory John Keighery