Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Leucopogon attenuatus
Common name
Grey beard-heath
Family
Ericaceae
Where found
Dry forest, woodland, heath, and rocky sites. Widespread.
Notes
Shrub usually to 1 m high, usually erect, sometimed sprawling. Leaf tips sharp. Branchlets hairy. Leaves alternating up the stems, erect to upwardly appressed, 0.2–0.72 cm long, 0.9–2.1 mm wide, grey-green to purplish-grey, covered in minute hairs, margins slightly to very curved down, upper surface concave in the ACT, convex in Victoria, tips blunt, with a slender mucro to about 1 mm long. Flowers white, pink, or tinged pink at the tips in bud, 3–4 mm long, 3-5 mm in diameter, tubular, with 5 shaggy hairy lobes. Flowers erect, in clusters of 1–3, forming leafy spikes up the branches. Fruit green, ridged, 2–4 mm long. Flowering: May–December.
On the far South Coast it tends to be a more compact plant than Leucopogon ericoides with a 'miniature pine tree' look to it, and grows in rocky places. https://atlasoflife.naturemapr.org/Community/Sightings/Details/4234002 (Jackie Miles) (accessed 2 May 2021)
in the ACT it is usually an erect shrub, leaves are concave on the upper surface, hairy, with a sharp pointed tips that is not curved down; flowers in clusters of 1-3 in the axils of the leaves along the branchlets. https://canberra.naturemapr.org/Community/Sightings/Details/1946630 (RW Purdie) (accessed 2 May 2021)
Styphelia attenuata in VICFLORA. (accessed 2 May 2021)
Family was Epacridaceae.
All native plants on unleased land in the ACT are protected.
Rare Vic.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Leucopogon~attenuatus (accessed 2 May 2021)
This identification key and fact sheets are available as a free mobile application:
