Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Pimelea spicata

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

Flowering stems. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, SGAP NSW Show, Sydney

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

Common name

Spiked rice-flower

Family

Thymelaeaceae

Where found

Dry forest, woodland, grassland, and coastal headlands. Two separate areas. Cumberland Plain and the Illawarra.

Notes

Shrub to 0.5 m high, or sprawling to prostrate, rhizomatous. Stems hairless. Leaves opposite or nearly opposite each other, 0.5–2.1 cm long, 2–11 mm wide, hairless, medium green on the upper surface, paler below, tips pointed to blunt. Flowers bisexual, rarely female, white often tinged with pink, 7–10 mm long, tubular, with 4 spreading lobes each 1.5–2 mm long. Flowers in many-flowered dense clusters when young, elongating to interrupted clusters to 35 mm long at maturity. Bracts absent. Flowers all year, mostly summer.

Endangered Australia. Endangered NSW. Provisions of the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 No 63 relating to the protection of protected plants generally also apply to plants that are a threatened species.

NSW Threatened Species profile:   http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/threatenedSpeciesApp/profile.aspx?id=10632 (accessed 1 February, 2021)

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Pimelea~spicata (accessed 1 February, 2021)