Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Ozothamnus argophyllus

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

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

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

Line drawings. f. flowering branch; flower head. E Beckett, University of Oxford, © 2021 Royal Botanic Gardens Board, Melbourne, Vic

Common name

Spicy Everlasting

Family

Asteraceae

Where found

Forest and woodland. Coast, ranges, and tablelands, south from the Wollongong area and the Southern Highlands.

Notes

Shrub to 3 m high. Branchlets densely white cottony. Leaves smell musky or spicy. Leaves alternating up the stems, 2.2–8 cm long, 3.5–12 mm wide, upper surface green and sticky, lower surface white-felty and glistening with droplets of glandular exudate, midvein and the margins hairless, margins flat or more or less curved down, tips somewhat pointed. Flower heads narrow-bell-shaped to top-shaped, 3.5–5 mm long, 1.5–3 mm in diameter. Florets 7–21, white. 19–28 bracts appressed to the flower heads, outer bracts leathery, golden, often red to pink in bud, inner bracts opaque white. Flower heads in dense clusters of 30–200, at the tops of the stems. Flowering: spring–summer.

Rare Vic.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Ozothamnus~argophyllus  (accessed 29 January, 2021)