Conospermum patens
Conospermum patens, commonly known as the slender smokebush, is a species of flowering plant of the family Proteaceae and is endemic to south-eastern continental Australia. It is an erect shrub with crowded linear or spatula-shaped leaves, panicles of densely hairy white, bluish-grey or purplish flowers and hairy, yellowish-brown nuts.
Description
Conospermum patens is an erect shrub that typically grows to a height of up to about and has its branches covered with soft, white hairs. Its leaves are crowded, widely spreading, linear or spatula-shaped, long and wide. The flowers are arranged in panicles mostly wide, on the ends of branches or in upper leaf axils, on a peduncle long. There are egg-shaped bracteoles long and wide. The perianth is white, bluish-grey or purplish, forming a tube long. The upper lip is egg-shaped, long and wide, the lower lip joined for with oblong lobes long and wide. Flowering mostly occurs from September to December, and the fruit is a hairy, yellowish-brown nut long and wide.
Taxonomy
Conospermum patens was first formally described in 1847 by Diederich von Schlechtendal in the journal Linnaea: Ein Journal für die Botanik in ihrem ganzen Umfange, oder Beiträge zur Pflanzenkunde, from a specimen collected in a pine forest near Gawler by Hans Hermann Behr. The specific epithet means 'spreading'.
Distribution and habitat
Slender smokebush grows in the west of Victoria in the Grampians, Little and Big Deserts and near Casterton, and on the southern Eyre Peninsula and lower south-east of South Australia, where it grows in heath, heathy woodland and shrubland.