''Hakea vittata'', commonly known as the striped hakea, hooked needlewood, is a shrub of the family Proteaceae. Restricted to an area on the

Eyre Peninsula The Eyre Peninsula is a triangular peninsula in South Australia. It is bounded by the Spencer Gulf on the east, the Great Australian Bight on the west, and the Gawler Ranges to the north. Originally called Eyre’s Peninsula, it was named af ...

and the

Gawler Range The Gawler Ranges are a range of stoney hills in South Australia to the north of Eyre Peninsula. The Eyre Highway skirts the south of the ranges. The Gawler Ranges National Park is in the ranges north of Kimba and Wudinna. The ranges are cover ...

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

and small areas in eastern

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seychelle ...

Description

''Hakea vittata'' is a prostrate or straggly shrub typically growing to a height of that forms a

lignotuber A lignotuber is a woody swelling of the root crown possessed by some plants as a protection against destruction of the plant stem, such as by fire. Other woody plants may develop basal burls as a similar survival strategy, often as a response t ...

. White smooth branchlets are covered with short soft hairs. Needle-like leaves long and wide are smooth and straight ending in a point long. An

inflorescence An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a Plant stem, stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphology (biology), Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of sperma ...

of 8-14 reddish-white flowers appear in leaf axils. The red-brown main flower stalk is long and covered in short soft hairs that lie flat. The hairs continue onto the individual flower stems that are long.

Sepal A sepal () is a part of the flower of angiosperms (flowering plants). Usually green, sepals typically function as protection for the flower in bud, and often as support for the petals when in bloom., p. 106 The term ''sepalum'' was coine ...

s and petals are white and the

style Style is a manner of doing or presenting things and may refer to: * Architectural style, the features that make a building or structure historically identifiable * Design, the process of creating something * Fashion, a prevailing mode of clothing ...

long. Woody brown fruit may be smooth, wrinkled or warty, egg-shaped long and wide ending with a small blister-like beak topped by short prominent horns. ''Hakea vittata'' has two characteristics that distinguish it from other species in the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

, the presence of "witches broom"

galls Galls (from the Latin , 'oak-apple') or ''cecidia'' (from the Greek , anything gushing out) are a kind of swelling growth on the external tissues of plants, fungi, or animals. Plant galls are abnormal outgrowths of plant tissues, similar to be ...

where it has a mass of dense shoots growing from a single point. Secondly the fruit splitting past the seed tip only on the side of the red-brown wood zone. Flowering occurs from August to November.

Taxonomy and naming

''Hakea vittata'' was first formally described by the botanist Robert Brown as part of the work ''On the natural order of plants called Proteaceae'' as published in the ''Transactions of the Linnean Society of London''. The specific epithet (''vittatus'') is a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

word for longitudinally-striped, referring to the markings on the fruit. The only synonym is ''Hakea vittata'' var. ''vittata''.

Distribution and habitat

Hooked needle-wood is found in the southern regions of

from

Kangaroo Island Kangaroo Island, also known as Karta Pintingga (literally 'Island of the Dead' in the language of the Kaurna people), is Australia's third-largest island, after Tasmania and Melville Island. It lies in the state of South Australia, southwest ...

and

Fleurieu Peninsula The Fleurieu Peninsula () is a peninsula in the Australian state of South Australia located south of the state capital of Adelaide. History Before British colonisation of South Australia, the western side of the peninsula was occupied by the ...

growing mostly in sandy mallee scrub on limestone.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q18082026 vittata Flora of South Australia Flora of Victoria (state) Taxa named by Robert Brown (botanist, born 1773)