Cassinia wilsoniae

Cassinia wilsoniae is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae and is endemic to a small area near the border between South Australia and Victoria. It is an erect shrub with densely hairy branchlets, needle-shaped leaves, and corymbs of twenty to fifty ochre-coloured flower heads.

Description

Cassinia wilsoniae is an erect shrub that typically grows to a height of with its branchlets densely covered with woolly or cottony hairs. The leaves are needle-shaped, long and wide. The upper surface of the leaves is yellowish-green and more or lass glabrous and the lower surface is densely covered with cottony hairs. The flower heads are ochre-coloured, long and wide, each head with up to six florets surrounded by fifteen to eighteen involucral bracts long. Mostly between twenty and fifty heads are arranged in corymbs in diameter. Flowering occurs from February to April and the achenes are about long and with a pappus about long.

Taxonomy and naming

Cassinia wilsoniae was first formally described in 2009 by Anthony Edward Orchard in Australian Systematic Botany from specimens collected in Wyperfeld National Park in 2004.

Distribution

Cassinia wilsoniae is only known from Wyperfeld National Park, Lake Albacutya and a single collection in South Australia.