Bertya linearifolia
Bertya linearifolia is a species of flowering plant in the family Euphorbiaceae and is endemic to a restricted part of New South Wales. It is a monoecious shrub with many branches, linear leaves, flowers borne singly in leaf axils or on the ends of branches, and narrowly oval or pear-shaped capsules.
Description
Bertya linearifolia is a monoecious shrub that has many branches with a thin, sticky film young shoots and branchlets. Its leaves are linear, long and wide on a petiole long. The upper surface of the leaves is glabrous, green and smooth, and the lower surface is white and densely covered with star-shaped hairs. The flowers are usually borne singly in leaf axils or sometimes on the ends of branches, on a peduncle long. There are two to five strap-like bracts long and wide. Male flowers are sessile or on a pedicel up to long with five elliptic or oblong sepal lobes long and wide and 25 to 35 stamens. Female flowers are on pedicels long, the five sepal lobes linear, about long and wide. Female flowers have no petals, the ovary is narrowly elliptic and glabrous, the style about long with three ascending limbs long, each with two or three lobes long. Flowering has been observed in July, and the fruit is a narrowly oval or pear-shaped capsule, long and wide with a single seed.
Taxonomy
Bertya linearifolia was first formally described in 2002 by David Halford and Rodney John Francis Henderson in the journal Austrobaileya from specimens collected in the Baerami Valley from Sandy Hollow in 1988. The specific epithet means 'linear-leaved'.
Distribution and habitat
This species of Bertya confined to the Denman-Sandy Hollow area where it grows on a ridge with eucalypts.