Epacris rigida

Epacris rigida is a species of flowering plant in the family Ericaceae and is endemic to eastern New South Wales. It is an erect, bushy shrub with elliptic leaves and white or cream-coloured, tube-shaped flowers.

Description

Epacris rigida is an erect, bushy shrub that typically grows to a height of and forms a lignotuber. It has softly-hairy branchlets, the stems with conspicuous, more or less triangular leaf scars. The leaves are elliptic, rarely oblong, long and wide. The flowers are crowded at the ends of branches and are wide, each flower on a peduncle long with bracts at the base. The sepals are long and the petals are white or cream-coloured and joined at the base to form a tube long with lobes long. The anthers are visible near the end of the petal tube. Flowering usually in August and September, and the fruit is a capsule about long.

Taxonomy and naming

Epacris rigida was first formally described in 1827 by Kurt Sprengel in Systema Vegetabilium from an unpublished description by Franz Sieber.

Distribution and habitat

This epacris grows in heath on exposed sandstone ridges in the Blue Mountains.