Pimelea micrantha

Pimelea micrantha, commonly known as silky rice-flower is a species of flowering plant in the family Thymelaeaceae and is endemic to southern Australia. It is a much-branched undershrub with narrowly elliptic to lance-shaped leaves and compact clusters or heads of densely hairy, creamy white flowers.

Description

Pimelea micrantha is a much-branched shrub that typically grows to a height of and has densely hairy stems. Its leaves are narrowly elliptic to lance-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, long and wide, on a short petiole. The flowers are borne in leaf axils or on the ends of branches in compact clusters or heads of 3 to 13 flowers on a peduncle about long with leaf-like involucral bracts at the base. The flowers are creamy-white and densely hairy on the outside, the floral tube long. Flowering mainly occurs from August to December and the fruit contains a pear-shaped nut.

Taxonomy

Pimelea micrantha was first formally described in 1854 by Carl Meissner in the journal Linnaea from an unpublished description by Ferdinand von Mueller, of specimens collected by Hans Hermann Behr. The specific epithet means "small-flowered".

Distribution and habitat

Silky rice-flower grows in sandy or clayey soil, often in rocky areas south from Manilla in inland New South Wales, in scattered populations in northern Victoria and southern Western Australia, and on Flinders Island and the Midlands of Tasmania.