Stenanthemum coronatum

Stenanthemum coronatum is a species of flowering plant in the family Rhamnaceae and is endemic to the southwest of Western Australia. It is a prostrate shrub with sparsely hairy young stems, broadly egg-shaped leaves and densely shaggy-hairy heads of tube-shaped flowers.

Description

Stenanthemum coronatum is a prostrate shrub that typically grows to high and wide, its young stems sparsely covered with star-shaped hairs. Its leaves are broadly egg-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, long and wide on a petiole long, with narrowly triangular stipules long and fused together. There is a deep notch at the tip of the leaves with a sharp point on each side of the notch. The flowers are creamy-white and densely covered with shaggy white hairs, the floral tube about long and wide, the sepals long and the petals about long. Flowering occurs from September to November, and the fruit is long.

Taxonomy and naming

This species was first formally described in 1848 by Siegfried Reissek who gave it the name Cryptandra coronata in Johann Georg Christian Lehmann's Plantae Preissianae. In 1858, Reissek changed the name to Stenanthemum coronatum in the journal Linnaea. The specific epithet means "crowned", referring to the leaf clusters on the ends of branches.

Distribution and habitat

Stenanthemum coronatum grows in woodland on laterite ridges between Bindoon and Narrogin in the Jarrah Forest bioregion of south-western Western Australia.