Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Maireana brevifolia

Seed cases on branches. Photographer Chris Clarke, Parr Scrub Reserve, Pinaroo, SA

Cancerous growths (three circled). Photographer Don Wood, Scotia Sanctuary, western NSW

Top of shrub. Photographer Don Wood, Scotia Sanctuary, western NSW

Line drawing. b. seed case. M Moir, National Herbarium of Victoria, © 2021 Royal Botanic Gardens Board

Common name

Small-leaf Bluebush, Short-leaf Bluebush

Family

Where found

Colonising species. Many vegetation communities, often on seasonally wet, often saline, soils. Western Slopes.

Notes

Shrub or perennial herb to 1.5 m tall.  Leaves fleshy. Stems striate, sparsely hairy to hairy. Leaves alternating up the stems, 0.2-0.5 cm long, more or less cylindrical to flat, hairless.  Flowers small, tubular, with 5 'petals', hairless, or the margins of the 'petals' fringed. Flowers single, but crowded into leafy spikes at the ends of the branchlets. Seed cases white or pink, 6–9 mm in diameter, hairless, tubular, the tube about 2 mm in diameter, flat at the tips, thin-walled, hemispherical and weakly 10-ribbed below the wings. Horizontal wings 5, spreading, fan-shaped, papery. Often has spherical, hairy, cancerous structures about 2.5 cm diameter.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Maireana~brevifolia (accessed 20 July, 2007)