Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Pimelea alpina
Common name
Alpine Rice-flower
Family
Thymelaeaceae
Where found
Woodland, heath, grassland, alpine herbfields, and rocky areas. Kosciuszko National Park.
Notes
Shrub to 0.3 m high, or sprawling to prostrate and mat-like. Stems hairless, tough and wiry. Branchlets rough with conspicuous leaf scars. Leaves opposite each other in pairs at right angles, crowded towards the ends of the branches, 0.3–1.3 cm long, 1-5 mm wide, concave in cross section, hairless, often glaucous, both surfaces the same colour or the lower surface slightly paler, usually medium green. Flowers sweetly scented. Flowers female or bisexual. Sometimes apparently functionally male and female flowers on different plants. Flowers pinkish red to pink or white, 5–8 mm long, tubular, with 4 spreading lobes each about 2 mm long. Flowers hairy with coarse hairs outside, sparsely hairy or hairless inside, in heads of 5–18 flowers, surrounded by 4 hairless green bracts each 0.4–0.9 cm long, 2–5 mm wide. Flowers July–Mar. Fruit 3–4 mm long, dry, green, enclosed in the now brown hypanthium base.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Pimelea~alpina (accessed 22 January, 2021)
This identification key and fact sheets are available as a free mobile application:
