Styphelia biflora

Styphelia biflora is a species of flowering plant in the heath family Ericaceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is an erect to spreading shrub with hairy branchlets, oblong leaves and small white flowers.

Description

Styphelia biflora is an erect to spreading shrub that typically grows to a height of and has bristly hairs on the branchlets. The leaves are glabrous, oblong, more or less flat, long, wide and sessile. The flowers are arranged singly or in pairs in leaf axils on a peduncle long with bracteoles long. The petals form a tube long with lobes long and hairy near the ends. Flowering occurs from July to October and is followed by glabrous, elliptic drupes long.

Taxonomy

This species was first formally described in 1810 by Robert Brown who gave it the name Leucopogon biflorus in his Prodromus Florae [Novae Hollandiae]. In 1824, Kurt [Polycarp Joachim Sprengel] transferred the species to Styphelia as S. biflora in Systema Vegetabilium. The specific epithet means "two-flowered".

Distribution and habitat

Styphelia biflora grows in woodland, sometimes on rocky outcrops and occurs in south-east Queensland and as far south as Dunedoo in New South Wales.