Dodonaea rhombifolia
Dodonaea rhombifolia, commonly known as broad-leaf hop-bush is a species of plant in the family Sapindaceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is an erect, dioecious shrub with simple, usually elliptic leaves, flowers arranged in cymess, the flowers usually with four sepals and eight stamens, and capsules with 4 wings.
Description
Dodonaea rhombifolia is an erect, dioecious shrub that typically grows to a height of up to and has angular, ribbed or flattened branchlets. Its leaves are simple, usually elliptic, long and wide on a petiole long. The flowers are borne singly or in small numbers in cymes in leaf axils, each flower on a pedicel long. There are four lance-shaped to egg-shaped sepals long that fall off as the flower develops, and eight stamens. The ovary is glabrous and the capsule is long and wide with four membranous wings wide with dull, black lens-shaped seeds long.
Taxonomy
Dodonaea rhombifolia was first formally described by in 1955 Norman Wakefield in The Victorian Naturalist from a specimen collected by Ferdinand von Mueller in "granitic gullies on the lower Hume River in 1874. The specific epithet means 'rhombus-leaved'.
Broad-leaf hop-bush grows in rocky granite or basalt soils in shrubland, near creeks in north-eastern and eastern Victoria, and in the north-east and far south-east of New South Wales.
Dodonaea ronbifolia is listed as "vulnerable" under the Victorian Government Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988.