''Quoya cuneata'' is a flowering plant in the mint 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 south-west of Western Australia. It is a spreading shrub with its branches and leaves covered with a layer of woolly, pale white or brownish hairs. The flowers are blue at first but become white with purple spots inside the

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 ...

tube.

Description

''Quoya cuneata'' is a spreading shrub which grows to a height of and which has its branches densely covered with pale white or brownish hairs. The leaves are egg-shaped or wedge-shaped, long and wide and lack a stalk. Both surfaces of the leaf are blistered and covered with woolly hairs. The flowers are arranged singly, sometimes in groups of up to three in leaf

axil A leaf ( : leaves) is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, st ...

s on woolly stalks long. The flowers are surrounded by

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 and bracteoles which are hairy on the outer surface and glabrous on the inside. The five sepals are long, with the egg-shaped lobes in two groups, five in one, two in the other with the upper three-lobed "lip" larger than the lower one. The sepals are densely woolly on the outside and mostly glabrous on the inside. The

s are long, forming a bell-shaped tube with five lobes. The petal tube is blue at first but turns white with purple spots inside. The outside of the tube has short hairs and is mostly glabrous inside except for the large lower lip and a dense ring of hairs around the

ovary The ovary is an organ in the female reproductive system that produces an ovum. When released, this travels down the fallopian tube into the uterus, where it may become fertilized by a sperm. There is an ovary () found on each side of the body. ...

. The lower central lobe is broad elliptic to almost round, long, wide and larger than the other four lobes. The four

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 extend a short distance beyond the end of the tube. Flowering occurs from August to November or December and is followed by the fruit which is oval-shaped to almost spherical, in diameter with the sepals remaining attached.

Taxonomy and naming

This species was first formally described in 1828 by Charles Gaudichaud-Beaupré from a specimen collected in

Shark Bay Shark Bay (Malgana: ''Gathaagudu'', "two waters") is a World Heritage Site in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia. The http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/places/world/shark-bay area is located approximately north of Perth, on the ...

during the Bougainville expedition in the ships ''l'Uranie'' and ''la Physicienne'' from 1817 to 1820. 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 ...

(''cuneata'') is a Latin word meaning "wedge-shaped".

Distribution and habitat

''Quoya cuneata'' grows in red sand between the Murchison River and

in the Carnarvon, Geraldton Sandplains, Murchison and Yalgoo

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

''Quoya cuneata'' is classified as "not threatened" by the Western Australian Government Department of Parks and Wildlife.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q28184816 cuneata Plants described in 1828 Taxa named by Charles Gaudichaud-Beaupré