Bertya granitica
Bertya granitica is a species of flowering plant in the family Euphorbiaceae and is endemic to Queensland. It is a shrub with many branches, linear leaves, flowers borne singly in leaf axils or on the ends of branches, and narrowly elliptic capsules with a light brown seed.
Description
Bertya granitica is usually a monoecious shrub that typically grows to a height of up to and has many branches. Its leaves are linear, long and wide on a petiole long, with the edges curved under. The upper surface of the leaves is bright green with a few star-shaped hairs, and the lower surface is white and densely covered with star-shaped hairs. The flowers are usually borne singly in leaf axils on a peduncle long. There are three to seven narrowly egg-shaped or egg-shaped bracts long and wide. Male flowers are sessile with five elliptic to oblong sepal lobes long and wide and 40 to 50 stamens. Female flowers are sessile, the five sepal lobes yellow-green, elliptic or oblong, long and wide. Female flowers have rudimentary petals, the ovary is glabrous, and the style is long with three spreading red limbs long, each with three or four lobes long. Flowering has been recorded in August and September, and the fruit is an oval capsule, long and wide with a single oblong, brown seed long and wide with a creamy-white caruncle.
Taxonomy
Bertya granitica was first formally described in 2002 by David Halford and Rodney John Francis Henderson in the journal Austrobaileya from specimens collected in the Beeron Holding in 1999. The specific epithet refers to the exposed granite rock outcrops where this species is found.
Distribution and habitat
This species of Bertya is only known from Beeron National Park in south-east Queensland, where it grows in shallow soil on exposed granite outcrops in open forest or woodland.
Conservation status
Bertya gravitica is listed as "endangered" under the Queensland Government Nature Conservation Act 1992 and the Australian Government Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. The main threat to the species is inappropriate fire regimes.