''Kunzea clavata'', commonly known as the Torbay spearwood, is a flowering plant in the myrtle 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 to a small area on the south coast of Western Australia. It is a shrub or tree, typically with many branches and grows to a height of . It blooms between September and October producing yellow flowers. Kunzea clavata habit

Description

''Kunzea clavata'' is a shrub or tree with several main stems and many branches and which grows to a height of . The leaves are linear, lance-shaped or shaped like a baseball bat, long and less than wide with a petiole less than long. The flowers are arranged in dense heads of 22 to 34 mainly on the ends of the longer branches. The flowers are surrounded by more or less glabrous

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 and wide and shorter pairs of bracteoles. The

floral cup In angiosperms, a hypanthium or floral cup is a structure where basal portions of the calyx, the corolla, and the stamens form a cup-shaped tube. It is sometimes called a floral tube, a term that is also used for corolla tube and calyx tube. It ...

is about long and the five sepals are triangular, glabrous and about long. The five

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 are long and pale yellow and there 30-35

stamen The stamen (plural ''stamina'' or ''stamens'') is the pollen-producing reproductive organ of a flower. Collectively the stamens form the androecium., p. 10 Morphology and terminology A stamen typically consists of a stalk called the filame ...

s. Flowering occurs in September and October and is followed by fruit which are urn-shaped capsules.

Taxonomy and naming

''Kunzea clavata'' was first formally described in 1996 by Hellmut R. Toelken from a specimen collected near

Bornholm Bornholm () is a Danish island in the Baltic Sea, to the east of the rest of Denmark, south of Sweden, northeast of Germany and north of Poland. Strategically located, Bornholm has been fought over for centuries. It has usually been ruled by ...

and the description was published in '' Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens''. 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 ...

(''clavata'') is derived from the Latin word meaning "clava", meaning "club" referring to the leaves often being shaped like a baseball bat.

Distribution and habitat

Torbay spearwood is often found around marshes and on the margins of lakes in coastal areas of the Great Southern region of Western Australia centred around Albany in the Jarrah Forest and

Warren A warren is a network of wild rodent or lagomorph, typically rabbit burrows. Domestic warrens are artificial, enclosed establishment of animal husbandry dedicated to the raising of rabbits for meat and fur. The term evolved from the medieval Angl ...

biogeographic regions A biogeographic realm or ecozone is the broadest biogeographic division of Earth's land surface, based on distributional patterns of terrestrial organisms. They are subdivided into bioregions, which are further subdivided into ecoregions. De ...

Conservation

''Kunzea clavata'' is classified as "not threatened" by the Western Australian Government

Department of Parks and Wildlife The Department of Parks and Wildlife (DPaW) was the department of the Government of Western Australia responsible for managing lands described in the ''Conservation and Land Management Act 1984'' and implementing the state's conservation and e ...

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q15368251 clavata Endemic flora of Western Australia Myrtales of Australia Rosids of Western Australia Plants described in 1996 Taxa named by Hellmut R. Toelken