''Grevillea candicans'' 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 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 the south-west of Western Australia. It is a bushy shrub with pinnately-divided leaves with sharply-pointed linear lobes, and cream-coloured flowers.

Description

''Grevillea candicans'' is a bushy shrub that typically grows to a height of . Its leaves are pinnately divided, long, with two to seven erect, sharply pointed, linear lobes long and wide with the edges turned under. The lower surface of the leaves has two hairy grooves. The flowers are arranged in leaf axils and on the ends of branchlets in cylindrical groups long, and are cream-coloured, 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 and glabrous. Flowering mostly occurs from August to November and the fruit is a glabrous follicle long.

Taxonomy

''Grevillea candicans'' was first formally described in 1942 by Charles Gardner in the ''

Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia The Royal Society of Western Australia (RSWA) promotes science in Western Australia. The RSWA was founded in 1914. It publishes the ''Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia'', and has awarded the Medal of the Royal Society of Western ...

'' from specimens collected by William Blackall. 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 ...

(''candicans'') means "becoming white or whitish".

Distribution and habitat

This grevillea grows in sandy soil in open shrubland or woodland from near Geraldton to the Murchison River with an isolated population east of Dalwallinu, in the Avon Wheatbelt, Geraldton Sandplains and Yalgoo biogeographic regions of south-western Western Australia.

Conservation status

''Grevillea candicans'' has been listed as Vulnerable on the

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biologi ...

as it has an estimated

extent of occurrence Extent may refer to: Computing * Extent (file systems), a contiguous region of computer storage medium reserved for a file * Extent File System, a discontinued file system implementation named after the contiguous region * Extent, a chunk of st ...

(EOO) of less than 12,000km², a severely fragmented range and a population decline of greater than 30% within the past three generations (75 years) due to habitat clearing for roads and agriculture. Current major threats to this species include the clearance of road verges where the species is found and weed invasion. It is also listed as " Priority Three" by the Government of Western Australia

Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions The Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA) is the Western Australian government The Government of Western Australia, formally referred to as His Majesty's Government of Western Australia, is the Australian state de ...

, meaning that it is poorly known and known from only a few locations but is not under imminent threat.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q3009770 candicans Eudicots of Western Australia Proteales of Australia Taxa named by Charles Gardner Plants described in 1943