Goodenia heppleana

Goodenia heppleana is a species of flowering plant in the family Goodeniaceae and is endemic to northern Australia. It is an erect or prostrate herb with lance-shaped leaves at the base of the plant and racemes of yellow flowers.

Description

Goodenia heppleana is an erect, low-lying or prostrate herb with stems up to long and hairy. The leaves at the base of the plant are lance-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, about long and wide. The flowers are arranged in a racemes up to long with leaf-like bracts, each flower on a hairy pedicel long. The sepals are lance-shaped to narrow elliptic, about long, the corolla yellow, hairy on the back, long. The lower lobes of the corolla are long with wings wide. Flowering mainly occurs from February to June and the fruit is a more or less spherical nut about in diameter.

Taxonomy and naming

This species was first formally described in 1918 by William Vincent Fitzgerald who gave it the name Calogyne heppleana. In 1990 Roger Charles Carolin changed the name to Goodenia heppleana in the journal Telopea. The specific epithet honours the surveyor William Hepple Brown, an officer of the Kimberley Survey Expedition, 1905.

Distribution and habitat

This goodenia grows in open forest and woodland in the north-east Kimberley region of Western Australia and in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.

Conservation status

Goodenia heppleana is classified as "not threatened" by the Government of Western Australia Department of Parks and Wildlife and as of "least concern" under the .