Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Melichrus procumbens
Common name
Jam tarts
Family
Ericaceae
Where found
Dry forest and heath. Sydney area, Blue Mountains, and Southern Highlands. Tablelands north from east of Bredbo. Occasionally elsewhere.
Notes
Shrub to 0.2 m high, or sprawling or forming mats. Fruit fleshy. Branchlets hairy, with prominent leaf scars. Leaves crowded, 1.1–2.8 cm long, 1.2–4 mm wide, rough with scattered longer hairs, deeply 10–14 ribbed on the lower surface, margins often narrow-translucent, with scattered short to long hairs. Flowers cream or pale green with pink-tinged lobes, tubular, the tube saucer-shaped, 2–2.5 mm long, with 5 spreading lobes 3–3.5 mm long. Flowers single, on the underside of the branches, forming leafy clusters. Flowering: July–September. Fruit green to red, flattened round, 2–4 mm long, green to red, smooth, hairless.
Family was Epacridaceae.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Melichrus~procumbens (accessed 24 January, 2021)
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