Hibbertia scandens
Hibbertia scandens, sometimes known by the common names snake vine, climbing guinea flower and golden guinea vine, is a species of flowering plant in the family Dilleniaceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is climber or scrambler with lance-shaped or egg-shaped leaves with the narrower end towards the base, and yellow flowers with more than thirty stamens arranged around between three and seven glabrous carpels.
Description
Hibbertia scandens is a climber or scrambler with stems long. The leaves are lance-shaped or egg-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, long and wide, sessile and often stem-clasping with the lower surface silky-hairy. The flowers are arranged in leaf axils, each flower on a peduncle long. The sepals are long and the petals are yellow, long with more than thirty stamens surrounding the three to seven glabrous carpels. Flowering occurs in most months and the fruit is an orange aril.Plants near the coast tend to be densely hairy with spatula-shaped leaves and have flowers with six or seven carpels, whilst those further inland are usually more or less glabrous with tapering leaves and flowers with three or four carpels.
The flowers have been reported as having an unpleasant odour variously described as similar to mothballs or animal urine or sweet but with "a pronounced faecal element".
Taxonomy
Snake vine was first formally described in 1799 by German botanist Carl Willdenow who gave it the name Dillenia scandens in Species Plantarum. In 1805, Swedish botanist Jonas Dryander transferred the species into the genus Hibbertia as H. scandens in the Annals of Botany. The specific epithet is derived from Latin, and means "climbing".Three varieties of H. scandens have been described and the names are accepted by the Australian Plant Census but not by the National Herbarium of [New South Wales]:Hibbertia scandens var. glabra C.T.White;Hibbertia scandens var. oxyphylla Domin;Hibbertia scandens Dryand. var. scandens.