Baeckea leptocaulis


Baeckea leptocaulis is a species of flowering plant in the family Myrtaceae and is endemic to Tasmania. It is a shrub with linear leaves and small white flowers with five or six stamens.

Description

Baeckea leptocaulis is a shrub that typically grows to a height of and has grey or brown branchlets. The leaves are linear, mostly long and wide on a petiole long. The flowers are about in diameter and are borne in leaf axils on a peduncle about long, each flower on a pedicel long. The sepals are oblong, about long and the petals are white, more or less round and long. There are five or six stamens, the ovary has two locules and the style is about long. Flowering occurs between December and March and the fruit is a cylindrical to bell-shaped capsule long and wide.

Taxonomy

Baeckea leptocaulis was first formally described in 1840 by Joseph Dalton Hooker in William Jackson Hooker's Icones Plantarum from specimens collected by Ronald Gunn at Rocky Cape. The specific epithet means "thin-stemmed".

Distribution and habitat

This baeckea grows in wet heathland and sedgeland in western and central Tasmania.