''Grevillea commutata'' 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 west of Western Australia. It is a spreading, open to dense shrub with egg-shaped leaves with the narrower end towards the base, and white, cream-coloured, and pinkish-green flowers.

Description

''Grevillea commutata'' is a spreading, open to dense, multi-stemmed shrub that typically grows to a height of and has silky to woolly hairs on the branchlets. Its leaves are usually narrowly to broadly egg-shaped leaves with the narrower end towards the base, long and wide. The leaves are sometimes divided with two to seven linear to narrow egg-shaped lobes long and long. The flowers are arranged in groups on a rachis long, 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 silky-hairy, the style with a green to cream-coloured tip. The fruit is a glabrous follicle long.

Taxonomy

''Grevillea commutata'' was first formally described in 1868 by

Ferdinand von Mueller Baron Sir Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller, (german: Müller; 30 June 1825 – 10 October 1896) was a German-Australian physician, geographer, and most notably, a botanist. He was appointed government botanist for the then colony of Vict ...

in '' Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae'' from specimens collected by

Augustus Oldfield Augustus Frederick Oldfield (1821–1887) was an English botanist and zoologist who made large collections of plant specimens in Australia. Oldfield was born on 12 January 1821 in London, England. He made botanical collections in Tasmania, the coa ...

near Gregory. 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 ...

(''commutata'') means "changed" or "altered", referring to the variable leaf forms. In 2000,

Robert Owen Makinson Robert Owen Makinson (born 1956) is an Australian botanist. He has published some 65 botanical names. See also Taxa named by Robert Owen Makinson. He studied at Macquarie University, was ABLO at Kew in 1995–1996 (replacing Barry Conn Bar ...

described two subspecies in the '' Flora of Australia'', and the names are accepted by the

Australian Plant Census The Australian Plant Census (APC) provides an online interface to currently accepted, published, scientific names of the vascular flora of Australia, as one of the output interfaces of the national government Integrated Biodiversity Information Syst ...

: * ''Grevillea commutata'' F.Muell. subsp. ''commutata'' has mostly narrowly egg-shaped leaves with the narrower end towards the base, and flowers from October to February; * ''Grevillea commutata'' subsp. ''pinnatisecta'' Makinson has mostly divided leaves and flowers from June to December.

Distribution and habitat

''Grevillea commutata'' grows in heath or shrubland on sandplains, dunes and coastal breakaways from north of the Murchison River to the Greenough River and inland to

Yuna Yuna may refer to: Geography *Yuna River, Dominican Republic *Yuna, Western Australia Music * ''Yuna'' (album), a 2012 album by Malaysian singer Yuna * ''Yuna'' (EP), a 2008 album by Malaysian acoustic singer Yuna People Japanese *Yuna Aoi, wr ...

in the Coolgardie, Geraldton Sandplains and Yalgoo biogeographic regions of western Western Australia.

Conservation status

This grevillea and both its subspecies are listed as "not threatened" by the

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 ...

. However, on the more recent

IUCN Red List 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 biol ...

assessment, it has been listed as Vulnerable. It has an

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 ...

of less than 20,000km² and a severely fragmented population. It is threatened by land clearing and habitat destruction for agriculture and urban development in the city of Geraldton.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q15579901 commutata Endemic flora of Western Australia Eudicots of Western Australia Proteales of Australia Taxa named by Ferdinand von Mueller Plants described in 1868