''Stirlingia simplex'' is a plant endemic to

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

Description

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin th ...

perennial A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wide ...

, ''S. simplex'' can grow as a

shrub A shrub (often also called a bush) is a small-to-medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees ...

or as

suckering Basal shoots, root sprouts, adventitious shoots, and suckers are words for various kinds of shoots that grow from adventitious buds on the base of a tree or shrub, or from adventitious buds on its roots. Shoots that grow from buds on the base o ...

herb In general use, herbs are a widely distributed and widespread group of plants, excluding vegetables and other plants consumed for macronutrients, with savory or aromatic properties that are used for flavoring and garnishing food, for medicinal ...

with short-lived stems arising from a perennial rootstock. Stems may be up to ten centimetres long, and the plant as a whole grows to a height of from ten to 60 centimetres, rarely to one metre. It has soft leaves that bifurcate repeatedly into lobes, with the final lobes measuring from two to twenty millimetres long. Flowers are cream or yellow, and occur in dense heads from ten to 15 millimetres in diameter, atop scapes up to 60 centimetres tall.

Taxonomy

The species was first published by

John Lindley John Lindley FRS (5 February 1799 – 1 November 1865) was an English botanist, gardener and orchidologist. Early years Born in Catton, near Norwich, England, John Lindley was one of four children of George and Mary Lindley. George Lindley w ...

in his 1839 ''

A Sketch of the Vegetation of the Swan River Colony "A Sketch of the Vegetation of the Swan River Colony", also known by its standard botanical abbreviation ''Sketch Veg. Swan R.'', is an 1839 article by John Lindley on the flora of the Swan River Colony. Nearly 300 new species were published in it, ...

'', based on unspecified material. Lindley commented that it "resembles a

Sanicula ''Sanicula'' is a genus of plants in family Apiaceae (or Umbelliferae), the same family to which the carrot and parsnip belong. This genus has about 45 species worldwide, with at least 22 in North America.Focus on Rarities (from the monthly Yerb ...

". Since that time, it has had a fairly straightforward taxonomic history. It has only two synonyms: *

Carl Meissner Carl Daniel Friedrich Meissner (1 November 1800 – 2 May 1874) was a Swiss botanist. Biography Born in Bern, Switzerland on 1 November 1800, he was christened Meisner but later changed the spelling of his name to Meissner. For most of his 40 ...

published ''S. capillifolia'' in 1855, but this was declared a

taxonomic synonym The Botanical and Zoological Codes of nomenclature treat the concept of synonymy differently. * In botanical nomenclature, a synonym is a scientific name that applies to a taxon that (now) goes by a different scientific name. For example, Linnae ...

of ''S. simplex'' by Alex George in 1995. * In 1884

Ferdinand von Mueller Baron Sir Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller, (german: Müller; 30 June 1825 – 10 October 1896) was a German-Australian physician, geographer, and most notably, a botanist. He was appointed government botanist for the then colony of Vict ...

proposed to transfer ''

Stirlingia ''Stirlingia'', commonly known as blueboy, is a genus of 7 species in the family Proteaceae, all of which are endemic to Western Australia. Description ''Stirlingia'' grows as a shrub or herb arising from a perennial tap root or woody root stoc ...

'' to ''Simsia'', the original, albeit illegal, name for the genus. His transfer was not accepted, and ''Simsia simplex'' is now a nomenclatural synonym of ''Stirlingia simplex''.

Distribution and habitat

It occurs throughout much of the

Southwest Botanic Province Southwest Australia is a biogeographic region in Western Australia. It includes the Mediterranean-climate area of southwestern Australia, which is home to a diverse and distinctive flora and fauna. The region is also known as the Southwest Au ...

of Western Australia, from Eneabba in the north, south to Waroona and east to Hyden. It grows in a variety of soils, amongst proteaceous- myrtaceous

heath A heath () is a shrubland habitat found mainly on free-draining infertile, acidic soils and characterised by open, low-growing woody vegetation. Moorland is generally related to high-ground heaths with—especially in Great Britain—a cooler ...

and eucalypt woodland, and prefers seasonally wet areas.

Ecology

It is not considered threatened.

References

External links

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q7617602 Eudicots of Western Australia

simplex In geometry, a simplex (plural: simplexes or simplices) is a generalization of the notion of a triangle or tetrahedron to arbitrary dimensions. The simplex is so-named because it represents the simplest possible polytope in any given dimension. ...

Proteales of Australia