''Hakea ceratophylla'', commonly known as the horned leaf hakea, is a shrub 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 southwest of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

. It is a stiff shrub with variably-shaped leaves that are sometimes lobed and flowers with white or rusty-coloured hairs.

Description

''Hakea ceratophylla'' is a stiff, multi-stemmed shrub that typically grows to a height of . Its young branchlets and leaves are covered with rust coloured hairs but become glabrous as they age. The mature leaves vary in shape from linear to narrow egg-shaped with the narrow end towards the base, long and wide, to leaves with between three and five lobes. Lobed leaves are wide with lobes long. The flowers are arranged in

umbel In botany, an umbel is an inflorescence that consists of a number of short flower stalks (called pedicels) that spread from a common point, somewhat like umbrella ribs. The word was coined in botanical usage in the 1590s, from Latin ''umbella'' "p ...

s containing between two and ten flowers with no apparent stalk. Each flower has a

pedicel Pedicle or pedicel may refer to: Human anatomy *Pedicle of vertebral arch, the segment between the transverse process and the vertebral body, and is often used as a radiographic marker and entry point in vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty procedures ...

long and is covered with white and rust-coloured hairs. The

perianth The perianth (perigonium, perigon or perigone in monocots) is the non-reproductive part of the flower, and structure that forms an envelope surrounding the sexual organs, consisting of the calyx (sepals) and the corolla (petals) or tepals when ...

(the non-reproductive part of the flower) is long and the style is long. Flowering occurs from September to December and the black fruit that form afterward are more or less egg-shaped, long and wide. The two seeds are long and have a narrow wing down one side.

Taxonomy and naming

The horned leaf hakea was first formally described in 1807 by

James Edward Smith James Edward Smith may refer to: * James Edward Smith (botanist), English botanist and founder of the Linnean Society * James Edward Smith (murderer), American murderer * James Edward Smith (politician), Canadian businessman and mayor of Toronto * ...

who gave it the name ''Conchium ceratophyllum'' and published the description in

Rees's Cyclopædia Rees's ''Cyclopædia'', in full ''The Cyclopædia; or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature'' was an important 19th-century British encyclopaedia edited by Rev. Abraham Rees (1743–1825), a Presbyterian minister and scholar w ...

. The

type Type may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc. * Data type, collection of values used for computations. * File type * TYPE (DOS command), a command to display contents of a file. * Ty ...

specimen was collected at King Georges Sound by Archibald Menzies. Smith noted "It is one of the handsomest of its genus". In 1810 Robert Brown changed the name to ''Hakea ceratophylla''. 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 ...

(''ceratophylla'') is derived from the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

words ''keras, keratos'' meaning "horn" and ''phyllon'' meaning "leaf" apparently referring to the leaves which in some forms have horn-like lobes.

Distribution

The shrub is found in southern areas of Western Australia in the Peel,

South West The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...

and Great Southern regions of

where it grows on seasonally damp flats and among

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

outcrops in sandy, loamy or gravelly soils. The plants range is from near

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

in the north and south to around Albany and inland to around 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 ...

area where it grows in heath or ''

Melaleuca ''Melaleuca'' () is a genus of nearly 300 species of plants in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae, commonly known as paperbarks, honey-myrtles or tea-trees (although the last name is also applied to species of '' Leptospermum''). They range in size ...

'' woodland communities.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q18083973 ceratophylla Eudicots of Western Australia Plants described in 1810 Taxa named by Robert Brown (botanist, born 1773)