Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Xanthosia pilosa
Common name
Woolly xanthosia
Family
Apiaceae
Where found
Forest, woodland, heath, rocky sites, and along streams. Coast, ranges, and the eastern part of the tablelands.
Notes
Shrub to 0.65 m high, sometimes scrambling. Stems hairy with much-branched hairs (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see), or sometimes nearly hairless. Leaves alternating up the stems, variable in size and shape even on the same plant, 3–7-lobed, 0.4–5.5 cm long, 5–55 mm wide, sometimes compound with 3 leaflets each 0.3-5 cm long, 1-30 mm wide, densely hairy to more or less hairless, upper surface dark green and hairy, lower surface whitish or often brownish tomentose, the lobes often with a tuft of hairs at the tip. Individual flowers with 5 white to pale green petals each 1–1.4 mm long, and 5 pale green sepals 1–1.6 mm long. Flower clusters usually 1–20-flowered, looking like individual flowers. 2-3 bracteoles below each cluster, petal-like, white to yellow or yellow-green, turning reddish, 3–10 mm long. Flower clusters often paired. Flowers most of the year.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Xanthosia~pilosa (accessed 8 February, 2021)
Description above partly taken from Hart, J.M. & Henwood, M.J., (2000) Systematics of the Xanthosia pilosa complex (Apiaceae: Hydrocotyloideae). Australian Systematic Botany. 13(2): 258-265, Figs 11, 12-16
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