Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Tetratheca thymifolia

Flowers and leaves. Photographer Jackie Miles

Flowering stems. Photographer Don Wood, north of Ulladulla

Flowering stems. Photographer Don Wood, Buckenbowra State Forest west of Batemans Bay

Common name

Thyme Pink-bells, Black-eyed Susan

Family

Elaeocarpaceae

Where found

Dry forest and heath. Widespread.

Notes

Shrub to about 1 m high. Stems cylindrical, usually with dense wart-based bristles or bristly ridges, rarely hairless. Most bristles 0.5–1.5 mm long, tending to point upwards but many twisted or irregular (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see). Leaves usually in whorls of 3–5, rarely opposite each other, alternating up the stems or in whorls of 6, 0.2–2 m long, 1–8 mm wide, more or less hairless to hairy, margins loosely rolled down, curved down, or rarely flat, tips pointed or blunt, and often mucronate. Flowers with 4 deep lilac-pink or rarely white petals each 6–15 mm long. Sepals falling early. Flower stalks and sepals with non-glandular hairs. Flowers single, rarely paired, on stalks 5-23 mm long.. Flowers most of the year.

Family was Tremandraceae. 

Hybridizes with Tetratheca rubioides.

Vulnerable Vic.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Tetratheca~thymifolia (accessed 11 April 2021)