Spyridium


Spyridium is a genus of about thirty species of flowering plants in the family Rhamnaceae, and is endemic to Australia. Plants in the genus Spyridium are shrubs or subshrubs usually with small leaves, flowers usually in clusters of small composite heads, the individual flowers small and densely woolly-hairy, and the fruit a capsule. Species of Spyridium are found in all Australian states except Queensland.

Description

Plants in the genus Spyridium are shrubs or subshrubs, usually less than tall and have hairy branchlets. The leaves are arranged alternately along the branches and are usually small, with papery brown stipules at the base. The flowers are small, Plant [reproductive morphology#Bisexual|bisexual], densely white woolly-hairy, sessile and usually borne in small composite heads with small brown bracts at the base, the heads themselves usually clustered in a corymbose cyme. There are five sepals, five petals and three carpels, and the fruit is a capsule with the remains of the sepals attached.

Taxonomy

The genus Spyridium was first formally described in 1837 by Eduard Fenzl in Stephan Endlicher's Enumeratio plantarum quas in Novae Hollandiae ora austro-occidentali ad fluvium Cygnorum et in sinu Regis Georgii collegit [Carolus Liber Baro de Hügel] and the first species described was Spyridium eriocephalum. The genus name means "a small basket", referring to the bracts surrounding the clusters of flowers.

Species list

The names of the following species of Spyridium are accepted by the Australian Plant Census as at June 2022: