Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Astrotricha crassifolia

Common name

Thick-leaf star-hair

Family

Araliaceae

Where found

Woodland on sandstone. Coast, mainly in the Sydney area. 

Notes

Shrub to 2.4 m high. Branchlets with a deep, firm covering of dense stellate hairs (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see). Leaves alternating up the stems, 2–6 cm long, 2.5–4 mm wide, upper surface shiny and smooth or occasionally wrinkled, lower surface densely covered with brownish hairs, tips blunt, margins entire and rolled down so that the leaf is convex except for the midvein groove on the upper surface. Flowers small, with 5 petals, white to cream, with mauve anthers. Flowers in few-flowered clusters up to about 10 cm long. Flowering: spring.

Vulnerable Australia. Vulnerable NSW. Provisions of the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 No 63 relating to the protection of protected plants generally also apply to plants that are a threatened species.

NSW Threatened Species profile with line drawing and photo of dried specmen:  http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/threatenedspeciesapp/profile.aspx?id=10074 (accessed 3 January, 2021)

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Astrotricha~crassifolia  (accessed 3 January, 2021)