Verticordia pholidophylla
Verticordia pholidophylla is a species of flowering plant in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is a shrub with a single branch at the base and many side branches with overlapping yellowish leaves and greenish-white to cream, cup-shaped, feathery flowers.
Description
Verticordia pholidophylla is a many-branched shrub which grows to a height of and wide. Its leaves are scale-like, almost overlapping but more or less spreading, broad elliptic in shape, thick long and wide.The flowers are arranged in short spike-like groups near the ends of the branches, each flower on a stalk about long. The floral cup is top-shaped, long, glabrous with small green appendages. The sepals are greenish-white to cream, sometimes pink, about long with 4 to 7 hairy lobes. The petals are the same colour as the sepals, erect, long with pointed lobes a further long. The style is long, bent and hairy near the tip. Flowering time is from September to November.
Taxonomy and naming
Verticordia pholidophylla was first formally described by Ferdinand von Mueller in 1859 from a specimen collected by Augustus Oldfield and the description was published in Fragmenta phytographiae Australiae. The specific epithet is derived from the Ancient Greek words ' meaning "a scale" and ' meaning "a leaf", referring to the small, scale-like leaves of this species.In his review of the genus in 1991, Alex George placed this species in subgenus Eperephes, section Verticordella along with V. pennigera, V. halophila, V. blepharophylla, V. lindleyi, V. carinata, V. attenuata, V. drummondii, V. wonganensis, V. paludosa, V. luteola, V. bifimbriata, V. tumida, V. mitodes,''V. centipeda, V. auriculata, V. spicata and V. hughanii''.