Styphelia mutica
Styphelia mutica, commonly known as blunt beard-heath, is a species of flowering plant in the heath family Ericaceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is an erect, straggling shrub with egg-shaped leaves with the narrower end towards the base, and small numbers of white, tube-shaped flowers that are densely bearded inside.
Description
Styphelia mutica is an erect, straggling shrub that typically grows to a height of up to, and has softly-hairy branchlets. Its leaves are egg-shaped leaves with the narrower end towards the base, long and wide on a petiole long. The leaves are flat with 3 to 5 parallel veins. The flowers are arranged in spikes of 4 to 10 up to long in leaf axils on a peduncle about long with bracteoles long at the base. The sepals are long, the petals joined at the base to form a tube long with lobes long and densely bearded inside. Flowering mainly occurs from September to October and the fruit is a bristly, black, elliptic drupe long.
Taxonomy
This species was first formally described in 1810 by Robert Brown, who gave it the name Leucopogon muticus in his Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae [et Insulae Van Diemen]. In 1867, Ferdinand von Mueller transferred the species to Styphelia as S. mutica. The specific epithet means "blunt".
Distribution and habitat
Blunt beard-heath grows in heath and forest on slopes and ridges from sea level to an altitude of in south-east Queensland and in eastern New South Wales as far south as Cooma.