Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Plantago muelleri
Common name
Star plantain
Family
Plantaginaceae
Where found
Alpine herbfields and the margins of streams and bogs, and below snow patches, in the alpine and subalpine zones of Kosciusko plateau and ACT.
Notes
Perennial herb with adventitious roots. Flowering stalks hairy, 1–2 mm long at flowering, elongating to about 5-20 cm long in seed. Leaves basal, 1.5-11.5 cm long, 5–15 mm wide, usually spreading, with 3 longitudinal veins, thick, glossy, hairless, margins entire or with a few inconspicuous teeth, bases tapering gradually to a slender stalk, tips blunt. Tufts of long golden-brown hairs in the axils of the leaves. Flowers tubular, the tube 2.5–3 mm long, with 4 lobes 1.4–2 mm long, spreading. Sepals 2.5–3.5 mm long. Sepal-like bracts just beneath the flowers oval and pointed, thick, 2.4–3.5 mm long. Flowers more or less in a head 4–6 mm in diameter, 2–13-flowered, hidden among the leaf bases at the flowering stage. Flowering: December–March
All native plants on unleased land in the ACT are protected.
Endangered Vic.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Plantago~muelleri (accessed 25 January, 2021)
This identification key and fact sheets are available as a free mobile application:
