Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Persoonia acerosa

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

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

Shrub. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, unknown place

Common name

Needle geebung

Family

Proteaceae

Where found

Dry forest, woodland, shrubland, heath, and roadsides. Ranges and tablelands, north of Mittagong. Occasionally coastal.

Notes

Shrub to 2 m high. Fruit fleshy. Bark smooth. Young branchlets hairless to sparsely hairy with greyish hairs. Leaves alternating up the stems, 1–2.3 cm long, about 0.5 mm wide, almost cylindrical, prominently channelled above, curved, almost hairless to hairless. Flowers with 4 yellow 'petals' each 8–10 mm long, more or less fused at the base, hairless. Flowers spreading to almost erect, in 1–80-flowered mostly leafy clusters. Fruit pear-shaped, yellowish-green with brownish-red markings, to 14 mm long and 10 mm in diameter. Flowers Dec.–May. 

Hybridises occasionally with Persoonia levis and Persoonia myrtilloides subsp. myrtilloides where they grow together.

Vulnerable Australia. Vulnerable NSW. Protected NSW.

NSW Threatened Species profile:  http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/threatenedSpeciesApp/profile.aspx?id=10591 (accessed 7 January, 2021)

PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Persoonia~acerosa  (accessed 7 January, 2021)