Pimelea brevifolia
Pimelea brevifolia is a species of flowering plant in the family Thymelaeaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is an undershrub or shrub with erect, elliptic leaves, and heads of white flowers surrounded by four involucral bracts.
Description
Pimelea brevifolia is an undershrub or shrub that typically grows to a height of. The leaves are erect, elliptic, long and wide and sessile or on a petiole up to long. The flowers are borne in heads on a peduncle mostly long and surrounded by four egg-shaped to broadly elliptic involucral bracts long and wide. The flowers are bisexual or female, usually white and glabrous inside, the floral tube long. The sepals are egg-shaped, long, the stamens shorter than the sepals and the style usually protrudes by up to long. Flowering occurs from July to October.Taxonomy and naming
Pimelea brevifolia was first formally described in 1810 by Robert Brown in his book Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen. The specific epithet is derived from the Latin words brevis meaning "short" and folium meaning "leaf".In 1988, Barbara Lynette Rye described two subspecies of P. brevifolia in the journal Nuytsia, and the names are accepted by the Australian Plant Census:Pimelea brevifolia R.Br. subsp. brevifolia has egg-shaped involucral bracts and long hairs on the ovary part of the floral tube.Pimelea brevifolia subsp. modesta Rye, previously known as Pimelea modesta Meisn. has elliptic involucral bracts short hairs on the ovary part of the floral tube.