''Olearia lepidophylla'', commonly known as club-moss daisy-bush, is a species of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

in the family

Asteraceae The family Asteraceae, alternatively Compositae, consists of over 32,000 known species of flowering plants in over 1,900 genera within the order Asterales. Commonly referred to as the aster, daisy, composite, or sunflower family, Compositae w ...

and is endemic to southern Australia. It is a rigid, erect to spreading shrub with tiny oblong to egg-shaped leaves and white and yellow, daisy-like

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 ...

Description

''Olearia lepidophylla'' is a rigid, erect to spreading shrub that typically grows to a height of up to and has twiggy branchlets covered with woolly white hairs. Its leaves are arranged alternately along the branchlets and clustered, oblong to egg-shaped, long, wide and more or less

sessile Sessility, or sessile, may refer to: * Sessility (motility), organisms which are not able to move about * Sessility (botany), flowers or leaves that grow directly from the stem or peduncle of a plant * Sessility (medicine), tumors and polyps that ...

. The edges of the leaves are rolled under and the lower surface is covered with pale gey, woolly hairs. The heads or daisy-like "flowers" are arranged singly on the ends of branchlets and are in diameter and sessile. Each head has four to seven white ray

florets This glossary of botanical terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts relevant to botany and plants in general. Terms of plant morphology are included here as well as at the more specific Glossary of plant morphology and Glossary o ...

, the

ligule A ligule (from "strap", variant of ''lingula'', from ''lingua'' "tongue") is a thin outgrowth at the junction of leaf and leafstalk of many grasses (Poaceae) and sedges. A ligule is also a strap-shaped extension of the corolla, such as that of a ...

long, surrounding four to six yellow disc florets. Flowering occurs from March to June and the fruit is a silky-hairy

achene An achene (; ), also sometimes called akene and occasionally achenium or achenocarp, is a type of simple dry fruit produced by many species of flowering plants. Achenes are monocarpellate (formed from one carpel) and indehiscent (they do not ope ...

, the pappus with 29 to 44 bristles.

Taxonomy

This olearia was first formally described in 1807 by

Christiaan Hendrik Persoon Christiaan Hendrik Persoon (1 February 1761 – 16 November 1836) was a German mycologist who made additions to Linnaeus' mushroom taxonomy. Early life Persoon was born in South Africa at the Cape of Good Hope, the third child of an immig ...

who gave it the name ''Aster lepidophyllus'' in his '' Synopsis Plantarum''. In 1867, George Bentham changed the name to ''Olearia lepidophylla'' in '' Flora Australiensis''. 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 ...

(''lepidophylla'') means "scale-leaved".

Distribution and habitat

''Olearia lepidophylla'' grows in mallee and heath and on coastal sand dunes in the

Esperance Plains Esperance Plains, also known as Eyre Botanical District, is a biogeographic region in southern Western Australia on the south coast between the Avon Wheatbelt and Hampton bioregions, and bordered to the north by the Mallee region. It is a pl ...

, Hampton and Mallee

bioregions A bioregion is an ecology, ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a biogeographic realm, but larger than an ecoregion or an ecosystem, in the World Wide Fund for Nature classification scheme. There is also an attempt to ...

of Western Australia, the south-east of South Australia, mainly in the far north-west of Victoria, the south-west of New South Wales and on the coast and a few inland areas of Tasmania.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q15588420 lepidophylla Eudicots of Western Australia Flora of South Australia Flora of New South Wales Flora of Victoria (Australia) Flora of Tasmania Plants described in 1807 Taxa named by Christiaan Hendrik Persoon