''Grevillea epicroca'' 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 south-eastern New South Wales. It is a shrub with elliptic to lance-shaped leaves and red, silky-hairy flowers.

Description

''Grevillea epicroca'' is a shrub that typically grows up to high and has branchlets with a few silky hairs. Its leaves are elliptic to lance-shaped, mostly long and wide, the lower surface with a few silky hairs pressed against the surface. The flowers are arranged in small groups near the ends of branchets on a rachis long. The flowers are red and silky-hairy, the style red or pinkish and more or less glabrous, 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 mainly occurs from November to May and the fruit is a follicle long.

Taxonomy

''Grevillea epicroca'' was first formally described in 2000 by Val Stajsic and

Bill Molyneux William Mitchell Molyneux (born 1935) is an Australian horticulturist and author who has researched and developed many popular cultivars of Australian plants, including Banksia 'Birthday Candles', and Isopogon 'Woorikee 2000'. '' Grevillea mo ...

in the '' Flora of Australia'' from specimens collected by Michael Crisp near Braidwood in 1976. 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 ...

(''epicroca'') means "a transparent woman's garment", referring to the thin layer of hairs on the lower surface of the leaves.

Distribution and habitat

This grevillea grows in moist forest on steep rocky slopes on the escarpment west of

Moruya Moruya is a town located on the far south coast of New South Wales, Australia, situated on the Moruya River. The Princes Highway runs through the town that is about south of Sydney and from Canberra. At the , Moruya had a population of 4,295 ...

at altitudes between in south-eastern New South Wales.

Conservation status

''Grevillea epicroca'' is listed as Near Threatened 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 ...

. It has a severely restricted distribution and a highly fragmented population, however, the species is not believed to be declining in population, habitat quality, extent of occurrence and

area of occupancy Area is the quantity that expresses the extent of a region on the plane or on a curved surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape or planar lamina, while '' surface area'' refers to the area of an open s ...

and the full number of subpopulations is unknown. There are no known substantial threats to this species and the population is presumed to be largely stable.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q430142 epicroca Flora of New South Wales Proteales of Australia Plants described in 2000