Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Cynanchum elegans
Common name
White-flowered wax plant, White cynanchum
Family
Apocynaceae
Where found
Forest, woodland, shrubland, scree slopes, rainforest gullies, and along streams. Blue Mountains and the Sydney area, and south to Gerringong.
Notes
Climber or twiner to 10 m tall. Plants are capable of suckering from the rootstock in response to occasional slashing or grazing. Fruit at first fleshy, becoming a dry pod at maturity. Bark becoming corky, fissured, cream to fawn. Stems sparsely hairy, becoming hairless. Leaves opposite each other, rarely in whorls of 3, 1.5–10.5 cm long, 10–75 mm wide, tips pointed, bases squared off to scarcely cordate, 2 basal glands present, surfaces mostly more or less hairless. Flowers white, 6–12 mm in diameter, tubular, with 5 spreading lobes 3-4 mm long, in few-flowered clusters. Flowering: most of the year. Seeds with long silky hairs attached to one end.
Family was Asclepiadaceae.
Endangered Australia. Endangered NSW. Provisions of the NSW 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=10196 (accessed 4 January, 2021)
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Cynanchum~elegans (accessed 4 January, 2021)
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