Olearia rosmarinifolia


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

Description

Olearia rosmarinifolia is a straggly shrub that typically grows to a height of up to. Its leaves are scattered along the branches, linear, long and wide with the edges rolled under. The upper surface of the leaves is more or less glabrous, the lower surface covered with greyish, woolly hairs. The heads or daisy-like "flowers" are arranged in corymbs on a peduncle up to and are in diameter with 5 to 7 white ray florets, surrounding 8 to 21 yellow disc florets. Flowering occurs from October to December and the fruit is a glabrous achene, the pappus with 60 to 84 bristles.

Taxonomy

This daisy was first formally described in 1836 by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle who gave it the name Eurybia rosmarinifolia in his Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis from specimens collected near Bathurst. In 1867, George Bentham changed the name to Olearia rosmarinifolia in Flora Australiensis. The specific epithet means "Rosmarinus-leaved".

Distribution and habitat

Olearia rosmarinifolia grows in rocky sites near rivers and in gorges from south-east Queensland and south to near Cooma in southern New South Wales.