Cyanothamnus westringioides

Cyanothamnus westringioides is a species of erect shrub that is endemic to a small area in the southwest of Western Australia. It has simple, narrow, sessile leaves and pale pink flowers arranged singly in leaf axils.

Description

Cyanothamnus westringioides is an erect shrub that typically grows to a height of and has ascending branches. The leaves are sessile and elliptic, sometimes trifoliate, more or less terete and long. The flowers are borne singly in upper leaf axils on a top-shaped pedicel long. There are leaf-like bracts about long at the base of the flowers. The sepals are prominently glandular, triangular to egg-shaped or pointed and long. The petals are pale pink, thin and glandular, elliptical and long. The stamens are glandular near the tip. Flowering occurs from July to October.

Taxonomy and naming

This species was first formally described in 1998 by Paul Wilson and given the name Boronia westringioides in the journal Nuytsia from a specimen collected near the road between Hyden, [Western Australia|Hyden] and Norseman. In a 2013 paper in the journal Taxon, Marco Duretto and others changed the name to Cyanothamnus westringioides on the basis of cladistic analysis. The specific epithet refers to the similarity of this species to some in the genus Westringia.

Distribution and habitat

Cyanothamnus westringioides grows on loamy sandplains in a small area north of Lake King and east of Hyden.

Conservation

Cyanothamnus westringioides is classified as "Priority Two" by the Western Australian Government Department of Parks and Wildlife meaning that it is poorly known and from only one or a few locations.