''Grevillea acrobotrya'' is a species of flowering plant in the family

Proteaceae The Proteaceae form a family of flowering plants predominantly distributed in the Southern Hemisphere. The family comprises 83 genera with about 1,660 known species. Together with the Platanaceae and Nelumbonaceae, they make up the order Pro ...

and is endemic to the southwest of Western Australia. It is a prickly, spreading to erect shrub with egg-shaped to trowel-shaped leaves with sharply-tipped lobes, and white to cream-coloured flowers with smaller leaves at the base.

Description

''Grevillea acrobotrya'' is a spreading to erect shrub that typically grows to a height of and has woolly-hairy branchlets, but glabrous flowering branchlets. Its leaves are egg-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, or trowel-shaped, long and wide with five to nine sharply-pointed lobes. The branches bearing flowers have smaller leaves that have three narrowly triangular, sharply pointed lobes and are up to about long. The flowers are arranged in more or less spherical groups on the ends of branches and in leaf axils, each flower on a pedicel long, the perianth white to cream-coloured, the limb chocolate-coloured and the

pistil Gynoecium (; ) is most commonly used as a collective term for the parts of a flower that produce ovules and ultimately develop into the fruit and seeds. The gynoecium is the innermost whorl of a flower; it consists of (one or more) ''pistils'' ...

long. Flowering occurs in most months with a peak from June to September and the fruit is a smooth, oblong follicle mostly long.

Taxonomy

''Grevillea acrobotrya'' was first formally described in 1855 by Carl Meissner in Hooker's '' Journal of Botany and Kew Garden Miscellany'' based on material collected by James Drummond in the hinterland north of the Swan River. 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 ...

(''acrobotrya'') means "a bunch of grapes".

Distribution and habitat

This grevillea grows in heathland between Eneabba and Badgingarra in the Geraldton Sandplains and

Swan Coastal Plain The Swan Coastal Plain in Western Australia is the geographic feature which contains the Swan River as it travels west to the Indian Ocean. The coastal plain continues well beyond the boundaries of the Swan River and its tributaries, as a geol ...

biogeographic regions of south-western Western Australia.

Conservation status

''Grevillea acrobotyra'' is listed as Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The species is threatened by continuous and severe land clearing for sand mining, agriculture and road construction.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q5607866 acrobotrya Endemic flora of Western Australia Eudicots of Western Australia Proteales of Australia Taxa named by Carl Meissner Plants described in 1855