''Prostanthera gilesii'' is a species of flowering plant in the family

Lamiaceae The Lamiaceae ( ) or Labiatae are a family of flowering plants commonly known as the mint, deadnettle or sage family. Many of the plants are aromatic in all parts and include widely used culinary herbs like basil, mint, rosemary, sage, savory ...

and is endemic to the

Mount Canobolas Mount Canobolas, a mountain on a spur of the Great Dividing Range, is located in the Central Tablelands region of New South Wales, Australia. With an elevation of above sea level, Mount Canobolas, an extinct volcano, is the highest mountain i ...

area of New South Wales. It is a small, compact, spreading shrub with aromatic, narrow egg-shaped to elliptical leaves, and white to yellowish white flowers with purple to dark mauve markings inside the petal tube and pale orange markings on the petal lobes.

Description

''Prostanthera gilesii'' is a compact, spreading shrub that typically grows to a height of up to and has more or less cylindrical, moderately hairy branchlets. The leaves are aromatic, glossy dark green, paler on the lower side, almost glabrous, narrow egg-shaped to more elliptical, long and wide on a petiole long. The flowers are arranged singly in three or four upper leaf axils with bracteoles about long at the base. The sepals are green and form a tube wide with two lobes, the lower lobe long and wide and the upper lobe long and wide. The petals are white to yellowish white and long forming a tube long with purple to dark mauve marking inside the tube. The central lower lobe has pale orange markings and is long and wide, the side lobes long and wide. The upper lobe is long and wide with a central notch about deep. Flowering occurs in November and December.

Taxonomy and naming

''Prostanthera gilesii'' was first formally described in 2015 by

Barry Conn Barry John Conn (Barry Conn, born 1948), is an Australian botanist. He was awarded a Ph.D. from Adelaide University in 1982 for work on ''Prostanthera''. Career Conn's first appointment as a botanist was with the Lae Herbarium in 1974. He ...

and Trevor Wilson from an unpublished description by George Althofer and the description was published in the journal '' Telopea''. 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 ...

(''gilesii'') was proposed by Althofer to honour William E. Giles who discovered the species in the 1940s.

Distribution and habitat

This mint bush grows in forest dominated by '' Eucalyptus dalrympleana'' but is only known from the Mount Canobolas State Conservation Area.

Conservation status

This mintbush is listed as "critically endangered" under the New South Wales Government '' Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016''. The main threats to the species are its small population size, inappropriate fire regimes, weed invasion, disturbance by pigs and illegal collection of plant material.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q65946266 gilesii Flora of New South Wales Lamiales of Australia Plants described in 2015 Taxa named by Barry John Conn