Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Persoonia laurina

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

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

Flowering stem (subsp. leiogyna). Photographer Don Wood, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra, ACT

Common name

Laurel Geebung

Family

Proteaceae

Where found

Dry forest, woodland, and heath.

subsp. intermedia:  Ranges and tablelands north of the Illawarra Highway. Occasionally farther south.

subsp. laurina:  Coast and ranges north of the Illawarra Highway.

subsp. leiogyna:  Coast, ranges, and tablelands, north from the Budawang Range.

Notes

Shrub 2 m tall or sprawling. Fruit fleshy. Young branchlets densely hairy with greyish to rusty hairs. Leaves mostly opposite each other, sometimes alternating up the stems, 3.5–11 cm long, 10–60 mm wide, flat, with curved down margins, surfaces sparsely to moderately hairy when young, becoming hairless when mature, smooth or moderately rough. Flowers with 4 yellow 'petals' each 12–15 mm long, more or less fused at the base, densely hairy. Flowers erect, on stalks 0-2 mm long, in short clusters at the bases of the leaves. Flowers Nov.–Jan. Fruit green, turning purple when ripe, oval.

Protected NSW.

subsp. intermedia:  Ovary densely hairy; mature leaves rough.

subsp. laurina:  Ovary densely hairy; mature leaves smooth.

subsp. leiogyna:  Ovary hairless; mature leaves rough.

PlantNET description of species and key to subspecies:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Persoonia~laurina (accessed 31 January, 2021)