Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Hydrocotyle laxiflora
Common name
Stinking pennywort
Family
Araliaceae
Where found
Forest, woodland, grassy areas, disturbed sites and gardens, and rock crevices, often in moist places. Widespread.
Notes
Perennial herb, creeping, rooting at the nodes or rhizomatous, to 0.4 m high. Stems moderately to densely hairy. Leaves single, spaced along the (sometimes underground) stems, round to cordate or kidney shaped, 8–50 mm in diameter, with 5–11 shallow lobes, margins scalloped, surfaces hairy; stalk 10–120 mm long, densely hairy. Male and female flowers usually on different plants. Flowers sometimes bisexual. Flowers smell putrid or like an earth closet type toilet, particularly when wet. Flowers 0.5-2 mm in diameter, with 5 petals. Female flowers with petals falling at the time the flower opens, and often remaining attached to each other forming a cup. Male flowers with pale green to white spreading petals. Flower clusters globular, 5–16 mm in diameter, usually 30–50-flowered, the individual flowers often with noticeable stalks, the clusters on stalks that are usually longer than the leaves. Flowers Spring to Autumn.
Family was Apiaceae.
All native plants on unleased land in the ACT are protected.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Hydrocotyle~laxiflora (accessed 19 January, 2021)
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