Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Leucopogon microphyllus

Flowering branches (subsp. microphyllus). Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra, ACT

Flowering branches (var. pilibundus). Photographer Don Wood, Morton National Park

Flowering branches (var. pilibundus). Photographer Don Wood, Black Mountain, Canberra, ACT

Flowering shrub (var. pilibundus). Australian Plant Image Index, photographer C McDonald, Black Mountain, Canberra ACT

Common name

Hairy beard-heath

Family

Ericaceae

Where found

Dry forest, woodland, heath, and shrubland, sometimes on rocky soils. Widespread.

var microphyllus:  Mainly coast and ranges north from Lake Conjola. Occasional elsewhere.

var. pilibundus:  ACT and tablelands Coast and ranges west and south of Eden. Occasional eslewhere.

Notes

Erect, often compact shrub, sometimes spreading, to 1 m high. Branchlets hairy or slightly rough to rough with stiff hairs. Leaves alternating up the stems, 0.2–0.73 cm long, 0.5–2.5 mm wide; margins entire and with long coarse hairs, surfaces hairless, hairy, or rough, upper surface concave (ACT) or concave to convex (elsewhere), tips blunt, usually with a short curved mucro. Flowers white, tubular, the tube 1.1–1.85 mm long, with 5 hairy lobes 1.5–2.6 mm long. Sepals sometimes sharply pointed, dark-tipped. Flowers erect, in clusters of 1–9 at the ends of the branchlets. Flowering: throughout the year.

Family was Epacridaceae.

var. microphyllus:  Leaves, bracteoles and sepals hairless; corolla lobes often pointing up, just longer than the tube.

var. pilibundus:  Leaves sparsely to densely hairy on both surfaces; bracteoles and sepals with short to long hairs; corolla lobes spreading to curved backwards, and up to twice the tube length.

in the ACT it is an erect, often compact subshrub, leaves are usually concave on the upper surface, hairy, often especially so on the margins, with an blunt tips that has a curved down small point; flowers in a spike or cluster of 4-9 flowers at the ends of the branchlets. https://canberra.naturemapr.org/Community/Sightings/Details/1946630  (RW Purdie) (accessed 26 February, 2021)

All native plants on unleased land in the ACT are protected.

Rare Vic.

PlantNET description of species and key to varieties:   http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Leucopogon~microphyllus (accessed 26 February, 2021)