Olearia chrysophylla

Olearia chrysophylla is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is a shrub with scattered elliptic leaves, and white and yellow, daisy-like inflorescences.

Description

Olearia chrysophylla is a shrub that typically grows to a height of up to. It has scattered elliptic leaves arranged in opposite pairs, long and wide on a petiole up to long, the edges of the leaves sometimes with indistinct teeth. The upper surface of the leaves is glabrous but the lower surface is covered with felt-like, pale brown hairs. The heads or daisy-like "flowers" are arranged on the ends of branchlets and are in diameter on a peduncle up to long. Each head has four to seven white ray florets surrounding twelve to fourteen yellow disc florets. Flowering occurs from November to January and the fruit is a glabrous achene, the pappus with 73 to 85 bristles in two rows.

Taxonomy

This daisy bush was first formally described in 1836 by Augustin [Pyramus de Candolle] who gave it the name Eurybia chrysophylla in his Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis. In 1867 George Bentham changed that name to Olearia chrysophylla in Flora Australiensis. The specific epithet means "golden-leaved".

Distribution and habitat

Olearia chrysophylla grows in forest, usually at higher altitudes from south-east Queensland to the New [England National Park] in New South Wales, sometimes as far inland as Jenolan Caves and Bathurst, [New South Wales|Bathurst].