Synaphea acutiloba
Synaphea acutiloba, commonly known as granite synaphea, is a flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to Western Australia. It is a shrub with many stems with very wavy, pinnatipartite leaves, spike of yellow flowers much longer than the foliage, and glabrous, more or less cylindrical fruit.
Description
Synaphea acutiloba is an erect, tufted shrub that typically grows to a height of and has many stems up to long with few branches covered with soft hairs at first, later becoming glabrous. The leaves are pinnatipartite long, wide and very wavy, on a petiole long. The lowest lobes of the leaves have two or three lobes, the end lobes triangular, long with two to three sharply pointed lobes with the edges rolled under. The flowers are borne in crowded spikes long and much longer than the leaves, on a branched peduncle up to long. The flowers are yellow, long, the upper tepals long and wide, the lower tepals long. The stigma is long and wide, more or less flat and the lower half of the ovary is hairy. The fruit is more or less cylindrical and glabrous, long.
Taxonomy
Synaphea acutiloba was first formally described in 1845 by Carl Meissner in Johann [Georg Christian Lehmann|Lehmann's] Plantae Preissianae from specimens collected by James Drummond. The specific epithet means 'sharp-pointed lobes'.
Distribution and habitat
Granite synaphea grows in granitic and lateritic soils in kwongan and woodland along and just east of the Darling Scarp near Perth in the Jarrah Forest and Swan Coastal Plain bioregions of south-western Western Australia.
Synaphea acutiloba is listed as "not threatened" by the Government of Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions.