Cassinia maritima

Cassinia maritima commonly known as coast cassinia, is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae and is endemic to coastal areas of south-eastern Australia. It is an erect shrub with glandular hairs embedded in a sticky layer on its branches and leaves, needle-shaped leaves, and white to yellowish heads of flowers arranged in a flat-topped corymb.

Description

Cassinia maritima is an erect shrub that typically grows to a height of, its foliage covered with glandular hairs embedded in a sticky layer. The leaves are needle-shaped, long and wide with a curved tip. The upper surface of the leaves is sticky, the edges rolled under and the lower surface densely hairy. The flower heads are long and wide and white to yellowish, the Glossary of [botanical terms#floret|florets] surrounded by five overlapping rows of involucral bracts. The heads are arranged in groups of several hundred in a flat-topped corymb in diameter. Flowering occurs from January to March and the achenes are long with a pappus of twelve to sixteen bristles.

Taxonomy and naming

Cassinia maritima was first formally described in 2004 by Anthony Edward Orchard in Australian Systematic Botany from specimens collected by near the Cann River in 2004. The specific epithet means "growing by the sea".

Distribution and habitat

Coast cassinia grows in the shrub layer of scrub and forest in near-coastal areas from Eden, [New South Wales|Eden] in south-eastern New South Wales to far far north-eastern Victoria.