Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Zieria murphyi

Flowering stem. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra, ACT

Common name

Velvet Zieria, Murphy's Zieria

Family

Rutaceae

Where found

Forest and moist gullies. Blue Mountains, Bundanoon area, and Penrose area.

Notes

Shrub to 2 m high. Stems cylindrical, velvety with stellate and simple hairs (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see), becoming hairless. Leaves aromatic when rubbed, opposite each other, compound, with 1 or 3 leaflets, each 3–5 cm long, 3.4–10 mm wide, tips blunt to pointed, margins entire, and more or less flat; upper surface dark green, hairy with predominantly simple hairs; lower surface grey-green, velvety with mainly stellate hairs. Flowers white to pale pink, with 4 petals each 4–5.5 mm long, and with 4 stamens. Flower clusters shorter than the leaves, 3–9-flowered. Flowering: all year.

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:  http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/threatenedSpeciesApp/profile.aspx?id=10860  (accessed 8 January 2021)

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Zieria~murphyi  (accessed 8 January 2021)