Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Olearia erubescens

Flowering stems. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra, ACT

Flowering branch. Photographer Don Wood, Ben Boyd National Park south of Eden

Flowering branch. Photographer Don Wood, Warks Road, ACT

Flowering shrub. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra, ACT

Common name

Pink-tip daisy-bush, Silky diasy-bush, Moth daisy-bush

Family

Asteraceae

Where found

Forest and woodland, often on rocky sites. Widespread. No records from the Western Slopes north and west of the Hume Highway.

Notes

Shrub to 2 m high; shoots and young leaves often red. Branchlets closely covered by whitish or silvery T-shaped hairs (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see), later becoming hairless. Leaf tips pointed, mucronate; margins prickly and flat. Leaves alternating up the stems, scattered, or crowded, 1.2–12.5 cm long, 3–20 mm wide, upper surface hairless. lower surface of young leaves covered in fine red hairs, becoming whitish- or silver-felted with age. Flower heads  with 4–8 white 'petals' and yellow centres. Flower heads about 4-9 mm long, 15–31 mm in diameter overall, conical to top-shaped below the 'petals', in open clusters. Flowering: September–March.

Massive regeneration after hot fires. Hybridises with Olearia argophylla and Olearia megalophylla.

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

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Olearia~erubescens   (accessed 23 January, 2021)