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Electronic Flora of South Australia genus Fact Sheet

Family: Proteaceae
Conospermum

Citation: Smith, Trans. Linn. Soc. 4:213 (1798).

Derivation: Latin conus, a cone; spermum, seed; alluding to the obconical nuts.

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: Smoke-bushes.

Description:
Shrubs or subshrubs; leaves simple, entire, flat or terete.

Flowers bisexual, single in a sheathing bract, arranged in short dense spikes which are sessile in dense compound-heads or solitary or paniculate on axillary or terminal peduncles, the rhachis often lengthening as the fruits develop; perianth with a straight tube, limb 2-lipped (Sect. Conospermum: in S.Aust.), the upper lip an entire hood, the lower with 3 narrow lobes; stamens inserted at the base of the limb, with short thick filaments, with the uppermost anther possessing 2 perfect cells, the lateral anthers having the upper cell perfect and connate with the adjacent cell of the upper anther (separating at anthesis), their lower cells and the two cells of the lowest anther abortive, reduced, usually subulate; hypogynous glands absent; ovary obconical, comose at the apex, 1-ovulate; style filiform, dilated and bent inside the limb, expanded again at the apex into a lamellar or narrow decurved pollen-presenter.

Fruit a small pubescent obconical nut, apex lined with long erect bristles.

Distribution:  About 38 species across southern temperate Australia, most diverse in south-western W.Aust. (L. A. S. Johnson & D. J. McGillivray (1975) Telopea 1:58-65.)

Biology: No text

Taxonomic notes: Conospermum mitchellii Meissner, of western Vic., has been recorded by J. Black, Fl. S. Aust. 263 (1948), from S.Aust.: SE, but no specimens or more detailed documentation have been located; it was presumably based on Bentham's, Fl. Aust. 5:371 (1870), adjacent Glenelg R., Vic., locality. This species still occurs in nearby parts of Vic. in wet heath on the Penola-Dergholm road and is likely to have extended into similar, now cleared, sites in S. Aust. It is distinguishable from Conospermum patens by its longer leaves, larger flowers c. 9 mm long and more floriferous corymbs. Previously used characters of relative lengths of perianth and limb and direction of the leaves break down, the last only in some Grampians, Vic., collections.

Author: Not yet available


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