Grevillea diffusa
Grevillea diffusa is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to the Sydney region of New South Wales. It is a low, compact shrub with elliptic to linear leaves, and dark red, or dark crimson to scarlet and burgundy-coloured flowers.
Description
Grevillea diffusa is compact shrub that typically grows to a height of up to but sometimes an erect shrub to. The leaves are elliptic to lance-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, or linear, long and wide, the lower surface silky-hairy and the edges curved down or rolled under. The flowers are arranged in dome-shaped to more or less spherical groups and are dark red, dark crimson to burgundy-coloured or scarlet, depending on subspecies. The pistil is usually long and the style strongly curved and more or less glabrous. Flowering occurs from July to November and the fruit is a glabrous follicle.Taxonomy
Grevillea diffusa was first formally described in 1827 by Kurt Polycarp Joachim Sprengel in Systema Vegetabilium from an unpublished description by Sieber.The specific epithet means "spread out".
In 1986, Donald McGillivray described subspecies of G. diffusa in his book New Names in Grevillea , and in 2000 Robert Owen Makinson described subspecies in Flora of Australia, and the following three names are accepted by the Australian Plant Census:Grevillea diffusa subsp. constablei Makinson has narrowly elliptic to more or less linear leaves mostly long and wide, peduncles less than long and dark crimson to dark burgundy-coloured flowers;Grevillea diffusa Sieber ex Spreng. subsp. diffusa has elliptic leaves long and wide, peduncles up to long and dark red flowers;Grevillea diffusa subsp. filipendula McGill. has narrowly elliptic to more or less linear leaves mostly long and wide, peduncles long and scarlet to light burgundy-coloured flowers.