Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Epacris purpurascens

Flowering stems (var. onosmiflora). Australian Plant Image Index, photographer unknown, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra, ACT

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

Flowering plant (var. purpurascens). Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra, ACT

Flowering plant (var. onosmiflora). Australian Plant Image Index, photographer unknown, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra, ACT

Common name

A heath

Family

Ericacae

Where found

Dry forest, heath, shrubland, and near streams and swamps.

var. purpurascens:  Gosford and Greater Sydney area and south to west of Wollongong.

var. onosmiflora: Blue Mountains and south to the mountains west of Wollongong.

Notes

Shrub to 1.8 m high. Leaves with sharply pointed tips. Older stems with prominent short, broad, leaf scars. Branchlets densely hairy. Leaves scattered or overlapping, 0.7–2.1 cm long, 4.4–9 mm wide, bases rounded or cordate, margins entire or fringed with long hair-like processes towards the leaf bases; blades thin, concave. Flowers white, sometimes pinkish, usually 7–10 mm in diameter, tubular, the tube 4.3–7.7 mm long, with 5 spreading lobes. No hairs on the inside of the flowers. Flowers along much of the branchlets. Flowering: July–September on the coast, mainly October–November on the tablelands.

var. purpurascens:  Leaf tips ending in a bristle, the bristle to 1.4 mm long, leaf margins entire, leaf stalks hairless. Flower tube shorter than to as long as the sepals, 4.3–6 mm long, lobes each 4.6–5 mm long; style 5.5–6.8 mm long.

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=10273 (accessed 5 January, 2021)

var. onosmiflora:  Leaf tips 1–2.2 mm long, margins fringed at least towards the base; leaf stalks very hairy. Flower tube longer than the sepals, 6.2–7.7 mm long, lobes each 3.6–4 mm long; style 7.7–8 mm long.

Family was Epacridaceae.

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