Persoonia nutans young drupe 2 16 06 12 AB edited

''Persoonia nutans'', commonly known as the nodding geebung, is a plant 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 to part of the Sydney region in New South Wales. It is an erect to spreading shrub with linear leaves and yellow flowers on down-turned

pedicels In botany, a pedicel is a stem that attaches a single flower to the inflorescence. Such inflorescences are described as ''pedicellate''. Description Pedicel refers to a structure connecting a single flower to its inflorescence. In the absenc ...

Description

''Persoonia nutans'' is an erect to spreading shrub that typically grows to a height of and has smooth bark and young branchlets with greyish hairs. The leaves are arranged alternately, linear, long and wide with the edges curved downwards. The flowers are arranged in leaf axils or on the ends of branches in groups of up to forty on a rachis up to long that grows into a leafy shoot after flowering, each flower on a downturned pedicel long with a leaf at its base. The tepals are yellow, long and glabrous. Flowering mainly occurs from November to April and the fruit is a green

drupe In botany, a drupe (or stone fruit) is an indehiscent fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin, and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a single shell (the ''pit'', ''stone'', or '' pyrena'') of hardened endocarp with a seed (''kernel'') ...

with purple markings.Fairley & Moore, Native Plants of the Sydney region, Jacana, Sydney, 2010

Taxonomy

''Persoonia nutans'' was first formally described in 1810 by Robert Brown in '' Transactions of the Linnean Society of London''. Brown collected his specimens from near Port Jackson and near

Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States * Richmond, London, a part of London * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, California, ...

and the Nepean River. In 1991 Peter Weston and Lawrie Johnson designated the Richmond specimens as the lectotype.

Distribution and habitat

Nodding geebung grows in woodland and forest on the Cumberland Plain between Sydney and the Blue Mountains and between Richmond in the north and

Macquarie Fields Macquarie Fields is a suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Macquarie Fields is located 38 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Campbelltown and ...

in the south.

Conservation status

''Persoonia nutans'' is listed as "endangered" under the Australian Government '' Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999'' and the New South Wales Government ''

Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995 The ''Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995 (TSC Act)'' was enacted by the Parliament of New South Wales in 1995 to protect threatened species, populations and ecological communities in NSW. In 2016 it was replaced by the '' Biodiversity Co ...

'' and a recovery plan has been prepared., Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water, NSW Government The main threats to the species are loss of habitat due to land clearing, inappropriate fire regimes, habitat degradation and rubbish dumping.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q7170725 Flora of New South Wales nutans Plants described in 1810 Taxa named by Robert Brown (botanist, born 1773)