Austrobaeckea pachyphylla
Austrobaeckea pachyphylla is a species of flowering plant in the family Myrtaceae and is endemic to the south of Western Australia. It is a shrub with bilaterally flattened leaves and small white flowers with two to eight stamens.
Description
Austrobaeckea pachyphylla grows as a shrub, typically high and wide. Its leaves are bilaterally flattened, egg-shaped with the narrower end towards the base in side view, long, wide and thick on a petiole long. The flowers are in diameter and are mostly borne singly on a peduncle long or on pedicels long when in groups of up to three. The sepals are broadly egg-shaped, long and the petals are white, long. There are two to eight stamens, the ovary has three locules and the style is long. Flowering mainly occurs from September to December and the fruit is a capsule long with a pitted surface.
Taxonomy
This species was first formally described in 1867 by George Bentham who gave it the name Baeckea pachyphylla in his Flora Australiensis from specimens collected by George Maxwell. In 2021, Barbara Lynette Rye transferred the species to Austrobaeckea in the journal Nuytsia. The specific epithet means "thick-leaved".
Distribution and habitat
Austrobaeckea pachyphylla is found on sand plains and gentle slopes, often with mallees, in the Esperance Plains and Mallee bioregions of southern Western Australia where it grows in sandy, clay and loamy soils around granite.