Gaudium divaricatum
Gaudium divaricatum is a plant species endemic to inland New South Wales. It is an erect or weeping shrub with compact fibrous bark, elliptical to egg-shaped leaves, white flowers arranged singly on short axillary side shoots and woody fruit that fall off when mature.
Description
Gaudium divaricatum is an erect or weeping shrub typically growing to a height of with multiple stems. Its older stems have rough, compact, fibrous bark while the younger stems are thin and covered with fine hairs. The leaves are elliptical to egg-shaped, mostly long and wide. The flowers are white, usually borne singly on short side branches, and are about in diameter. The floral cup is hairy on the lower part, about long on a pedicel long. The sepals are triangular, about long with a few hairs. The petals are long and the stamens are in bundles of between three and five and are about long. Flowering mainly occurs from August to October and the fruit is a woody capsule about in diameter that falls off when mature.
Taxonomy
This species was formally described in 1843 by Sebastian Schauer who gave it the name Leptospermum divaricatum in Walper's book Repertorium Botanices Systematicae. In 2023, Peter Gordon Wilson transferred the species to the genus Gaudium as G. divaricatum in the journal Taxon. The specific epithet is a Latin word meaning "widely spreading" or "forked".
Distribution and habitat
Gaudium divaricatum grows in woodland and heath in mallee or on hillsides on the North West Slopes, Central Western Slopes and Western Plains of New South Wales, south from Nymagee.