Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Darwinia fascicularis

Flowering stems (subsp. fascicularis). Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra

Flowering stems (subsp. fascicularis). Australian Plant Image Index, photographer M Crisp, Bulli

Flowering stems (subsp. oligantha). Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra

Common name

A Darwinia

Family

Myrtaceae

Where found

Dry forest and heath, usually on rocky sites.

(subsp. fascicularis)   Sydney region south to Bulli

(subsp. oligantha)  Blue Mountains. Also between Wisemans Ferry and South Maroota, Sydney area.

Notes

Shrub to 3 m high or sprawling, branches often prostrate and producing additional roots. Leaves aromatic when rubbed, crowded at the ends of the branches, opposite each other, or whorled, 0.8–1.6 cm long, about 1 mm wide, round or oval in cross section, hairless. Flowers with 5 curved petals, each 0.8-1.4 mm long, and 5 usually toothed sepals 0.5 mm long, up to half as long as the petals, at the top of the floral tube. Floral tube 5–7 mm long, 1–1.5 mm in diameter, with broad and rounded ribs, white above the ovary, becoming red toward the top in old flowers. Style straight or slightly curved, 12–18 mm long, white to red. Each flower surrounded by 2 bracteoles which fall before the flowers open. Flowers in clusters of 2-20. Flowers winter–summer.

Often hybridises with Darwinia glaucopylla where their distributions overlap.

subsp. fascicularis   Flowers in groups of 4–20, crowded. Erect shrubs to 3 m high; branches not rooting.

subsp. oligantha  Flowers usually only 4, rarely 2 or 6, in distinct pairs. Sprawling shrubs to about  0.30 m high; branches often prostrate and rooting.

(subsp. oligantha) Endangered population in the Baulkham Hills and Hornsby local government areas. 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 or a part of a threatened ecological community.

NSW Threatened Species profile (subsp. oligantha):  http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/threatenedspeciesapp/profile.aspx?id=10203 (accessed 5 January 2021)

PlantNET description of species and key to subspecies:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Darwinia~fascicularis (accessed 5 January 2021)

Additional information in Briggs, B.G. (1962) The New South Wales Species of Darwinia. Contributions from the New South Wales National Herbarium. 3(3): 146-149