Petrophile prostrata

Petrophile prostrata is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to southwestern Western Australia. It is a prostrate shrub with needle-shaped but usually not sharply-pointed leaves and spherical heads of hairy, pale yellow or cream-coloured flowers.

Description

Petrophile prostrata is a prostrate shrub that typically grows to a height of and has branches that are often covered by sand. The leaves are needle-shaped, long and wide, sometimes crowded on one side of the stems and have a slightly hooked point long on the tip. The flowers are mostly arranged on the ends of branchlets in spherical heads in diameter, with egg-shaped involucral bracts scattered along the stems under the head. The flowers are long, pale yellow or cream-coloured, and hairy. Flowering mainly occurs from late August to mid-November and the fruit is a nut, fused with others in an oval head long in diameter.

Taxonomy

Petrophile prostrata was first formally described in 2005 by Barbara Lynette Rye and Michael Clyde Hislop in the journal Nuytsia from material collected in the Fitzgerald River National Park in 1999. The specific epithet means "lying on the ground".

Distribution and habitat

This petrophile grows in heathland and shrubland from near Jerramungup to near Hopetoun, including in many locations in the Fitzgerald River National Park.

Conservation status

Petrophile prostrata is classified as "not threatened" by the Western Australian Government Department of Parks and Wildlife.