''Homoranthus coracinus'' is a flowering plant in the family

Myrtaceae Myrtaceae, the myrtle family, is a family of dicotyledonous plants placed within the order Myrtales. Myrtle, pōhutukawa, bay rum tree, clove, guava, acca (feijoa), allspice, and eucalyptus are some notable members of this group. All speci ...

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 a small area in Queensland. It is a low, spreading shrub with pointed, narrow, egg-shaped leaves and groups of up to six flowers with black

petal Petals are modified Leaf, leaves that surround the reproductive parts of flowers. They are often advertising coloration, brightly colored or unusually shaped to attract pollinators. All of the petals of a flower are collectively known as the ''c ...

s. It is only known from a single population in the Ka Ka Mundi part of the

Carnarvon National Park Carnarvon National Park is located in the Southern Brigalow Belt bioregion in the Maranoa Region in Central Queensland, Australia. The park is 593 km northwest of Brisbane. It began life as a reserve gazetted in 1932 to protect Carnarvon ...

Description

''Homoranthus coracinus'' is a prostrate to low spreading shrub to high and wide with grey, stringy bark. The leaves are green or grey-green, pointed, narrowly egg-shaped long, about wide and thick, covered faintly with oil glands, petiole about long. The

inflorescence An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed o ...

s are borne at the end of branches in pendulous clusters of 3-6 flowers,

bract In botany, a bract is a modified or specialized leaf, especially one associated with a reproductive structure such as a flower, inflorescence axis or cone scale. Bracts are usually different from foliage leaves. They may be smaller, larger, or of ...

s long, wide, glandular, apex rounded and the peduncle thick and long. The floral tube is cylindrical, long, in diameter, yellow, 4 faint ribs at the base, smooth and pink-red toward the tip. The 5

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 coined b ...

s are upright, white, long, wide and irregularly divided. The black petals are broadly egg-shaped, long, wide with smooth margins. Flowering occurs in April, May and September.

Taxonomy and naming

''Homoranthus coracinus'' was first formally described in 2000 by

Anthony Bean Anthony Russell Bean (born 1957) is an Australian botanist who works at the Queensland Herbarium and Brisbane Botanic Gardens, Mount Coot-tha. Since 1982, he has led the Eucalyptus Study Group of the Society for Growing Australian Plants. Care ...

from a specimen collected in the Ka Ka Mundi National Park (now part of Carnarvon National Park) and the description was published in ''

Austrobaileya ''Austrobaileya'' is the sole genus consisting of a single species that constitutes the entire flowering plant family Austrobaileyaceae. The species ''Austrobaileya scandens'' grows naturally only in the Wet Tropics rainforests of northeast ...

''. 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 ...

(''coracinus'') 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 meaning "ravenlike" or "black as a crow", referring to the colour of the petals.

Distribution and habitat

This homoranthus grows in heath and sandstone outcrops in shallow soils and is endemic to the Mount Mooloolong area in

in central Queensland. heath on

Conservation status

The species is known from a single population. Bean (2000) species considered endangered. ROTAP code of 2ECit using Briggs and Leigh (1996) IUCN (2010) considered 'Endangered'.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q15367826 Flora of Queensland Myrtales of Australia coracinus Plants described in 2011