Hibbertia banksii


Hibbertia banksii is a species of flowering plant in the family Dilleniaceae and is native to Queensland and New Guinea. It is a shrub with thick, leathery leaves and yellow flowers with about twenty to forty-eight stamens arranged on one side of the two carpels.

Description

Hibbertia banksii is a shrub that typically grows to a height of, the foliage densely covered with woolly brown hairs. The leaves are thick and leathery, elliptic to oblong, long and wide on a petiole long. The flowers are arranged in spikes of three to ten in leaf axils or on the ends of branchlets, the spikes long on peduncles long. The flowers are in diameter with egg-shaped to elliptic sepals long. The five petals are yellow and egg-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, long and with two lobes at the tip. There are about twenty to forty-eight stamens and nine to twenty staminodes all arranged on one side of the two carpels, each of which contains two ovules.

Taxonomy

This species was first formally described in 1963 by de Candolle in Regni Vegetabilis Systema Naturale from an unpublished description by Robert Brown, and was given the name Hemistemma banksii. The type specimens were collected by Joseph Banks near the Endeavour River. In 1863, George Bentham changed the name to Hibbertia acerosa in Flora Australiensis.

Distribution and habitat

This hibbertia grows on the edge of swamps and river banks on the Cape York Peninsula as far south as the Daintree River in far north Queensland and in southern New Guinea.

Conservation status

Goodenia banksii is classified as of "least concern" under the Queensland Government Nature Conservation Act 1992.