Hemiphora elderi
Hemiphora elderi, commonly known as red velvet, is a flowering plant in the mint family Lamiaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is a small shrub with its leaves densely covered with white, woolly hairs and with small clusters of reddish-purple, bell-shaped flowers.
Description
Hemiphora elderi is shrub which grows to a height of about with several branches arising from a single main stem. The leaves are pale green, linear to lance-shaped, but often appear almost cylindrical because their edges are strongly turned under. The leaves are long, wide, densely covered with white, woolly hairs, warty on the upper surface and with the lower surface often obscured by the rolled leaf edges.The flowers are arranged in short, leafy, spike-like clusters near the ends of the branches, on short woolly stalks. The flowers are surrounded by woolly, leaf-like bracts long and bracteoles long, glabrous on the upper surface and densely woolly underneath. The five sepals are long, densely covered with reddish-purple, woolly hairs on their outer surface, mostly glabrous inside and joined to form a short tube near their bases. The petals are long and joined for most of their length to form a tube which is reddish-purple coloured or occasionally yellow. The petal tube is hairy outside, mostly glabrous inside except for a hairy ring near the ovary. The five petal lobes are joined to form two "lips", the upper lip with two lobes and longer than the lower one which has three lobes. The upper lip is long and wide. There are four stamens but the lower two are sterile and do not extend beyond the end of the petal tube. The upper fertile pair extend beyond the end of the petal tube. Flowering occurs from July to November and the fruit is almost spherical, hairy and about in diameter.