Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Astrotricha ledifolia
Common name
Common starhair
Family
Araliaceae
Where found
Forest and woodland, often on rocky or in disturbed situations. Widspread. Rare on the coast, ranges, and Western Slopes.
Notes
Shrub to 1.5 m high. Branchlets stellate hairy (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see), felted. Leaves alternating up the stems, 1.3–4.5 cm long, 3–8 mm wide, upper surface rough, granular with the small grains usually evenly distributed, just detectable with a fingernail, and occasionally also with larger rounded conical projections to 0.3 mm high, sometimes the projections confined to near the margins, lower surface with a firm covering of hairs, margins entire; tips blunt. Flowers 4-5 mm in diameter, with 5 petals, creamy-green to white. Purple-flowered populations are known from the mountains in the ACT. Flowers in many-branched clusters, 2.5–15 cm long or more, sometimes forming more than half the height of the plant. Flowers Spring to Summer.
Rare Vic.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Astrotricha~ledifolia (accessed 4 January, 2021)
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