Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Monotoca elliptica

Flower cluster and leaves. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra, ACT

Flowering stems. Photographer Don Wood, Booderee National Park, Jervis Bay

Flowering branches. Photographer Jackie Miles

Line drawings. g. flowering branch; h. leaf undersurface; i. flower. EM Mayfield, National Herbarium of Victoria, © 2021 Royal Botanic Gardens Board

Common name

Tree broom-heath

Family

Ericaceae

Where found

Forest, shrubland, rocky outcrops, and coastal dunes. Coast and ranges.

Notes

Tree or shrub to 10 m high. Fruit somewhat fleshy. Branchlets hairy with minute hairs. Leaves alternating up the stems, 0.9–2.5 cm long, 2.4–7 mm wide, margins entire, and flat to slightly curved down, surfaces hairless, lower surface often glaucous and finely striate veined, tips mucronate. Flowers sometimes unisexual. Flowers whitish-cream, 1.4–3.4 mm long, hairless, with a bell-shaped tube, with 5 lobes each 1.2–2 mm long. Bracts subtending the flowers falling early. Flowers usually in clusters of 4–16 flowers crowded at the end of the branches and often longer than the leaves, occasionally single on new growth. Flowering: July–September. Fruit orange or red, oval, 2.5–4 mm long.

Family was Epacridaceae.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Monotoca~elliptica  (accessed 24 January, 2021)