''Spyridium burragorang'', is a flowering shrub in the family

Rhamnaceae The Rhamnaceae are a large family of flowering plants, mostly trees, shrubs, and some vines, commonly called the buckthorn family. Rhamnaceae is included in the order Rosales. The family contains about 55 genera and 950 species. The Rhamnaceae h ...

. It has dense clusters of whitish flowers at the end of branches, alternate leaves and is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to New South Wales.

Description

''Spyridium burragorang'' is a spreading, multi-stemmed shrub that typically grows to a height of . The new growth stems are thickly covered with short, grey to yellowish star-shaped hairs intermixed with long, curved or zig-zag simple hairs. The leaves are arranged alternately, upper surface dark green, lower surface densely covered in short, soft, greyish star-shaped hairs, occasionally sparingly with more or less flattened hairs along the veins, midrib and leaf edges. The leaf base is wedge-shaped to rounded, apex blunt to rounded, minutely pointed or straight to curved, and the petiole long. The

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 ...

is a terminal cluster or a loose grouping of 30-50 flowers with 2 to 4 oval to elliptic, whitish floral leaves. The white or cream flowers have five petals long,

hypanthium 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 ...

tube long, in diameter, and covered with occasional greyish, soft hairs or densely covered in long, soft, straight hairs and the brown

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 about long. Flowering occurs in June and July, and the fruit is a dry, grey or black rounded capsule about long.

Taxonomy and naming

''Spyridium burragorang'' was first formally described in 2004 by

Kevin Thiele Kevin R. Thiele is currently an adjunct associate professor at the University of Western Australia and the director of Taxonomy Australia. He was the curator of the Western Australian Herbarium from 2006 to 2015. His research interests include ...

and the description was published in '' 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 ...

(''burragorang'') refers to the area where it was located near

Lake Burragorang Lake Burragorang is a man-made reservoir in the lower Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia, serving as a major water supply for greater metropolitan Sydney. The dam impounding the lake, the Warragamba Dam, is located approximately sout ...

Distribution and habitat

This spyridium is a rare species growing on dry ridges in bushland on shallow soil near Lake Burragorang,

Wollondilly Wollondilly Shire is a periurban local government area adjacent to the south-western fringe of Sydney, parts of which fall into the Macarthur, Blue Mountains and Central Tablelands regions in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Wollondil ...

and near Cessnock.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q17241268 burragorang Rosales of Australia Flora of New South Wales Taxa named by Kevin Thiele