Petrophile ericifolia
Petrophile ericifolia is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to southwestern Western Australia. It is a shrub with cylindrical leaves, and oval to spherical heads of hairy, yellow flowers.
Description
Petrophile ericifolia is a shrub that typically grows to a height of and has branchlets and leaves that are sometimes covered with curly hairs when young but that become glabrous with age. The leaves are cylindrical, up to long with a rough surface. The flowers are arranged on the ends of branchlets, in sessile, oval to spherical heads in diameter, with many egg-shaped, pointed involucral bracts at the base. The flowers are long, yellow and hairy. Flowering occurs from August to November and the fruit is a nut, fused with others in an oval head up to in diameter.Taxonomy
Petrophile ericifolia was first formally described in 1830 by Robert Brown in the Supplementum to his Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen from material collected by William Baxter near King Georges Sound in 1829. The specific epithet means "erica-leaved".In 1995, Donald Bruce Foreman described two subspecies in Flora of Australia and the names are accepted by the Australian Plant Census:Petrophile ericifolia R.Br. subsp. ericifolia has more or less glabrous leaves up to long, flower heads in diameter and flowers up to long;Petrophile ericifolia subsp. subpubescens Foreman has leaves up to long with a medium to sparse covering of short hairs, flower heads about in diameter and flowers long. Subspecies subpubescens was first formally described in 1923 by Karel Domin as Petrophile ericifolia f. subpubescens.