Citation: F. Muell., Trans. Phil. Soc. Vic. 1:16 (1854).

Synonymy: B. opaca F. Muell. var. latifolia J. Black, Fl.S. Aust. 516 (1948).

Common name: Dark turpentine bush, smooth wallaby-bush.

Description:
Small sticky dioecious shrubs, branches slender, ascending, to 1 m high, glabrous, branchlets firstly yellowish-green heavily incrusted with sticky resin all around, later resin turning powdery, finally branches dark-grey; leaves oblong, 10-15 x 2-3 mm rarely to 7 mm wide, glabrous, rounded at the summit, attenuated into 1-3 mm long petioles, margins slightly thickened and recurred, glossy-green above, paler beneath, venation obscured by powdery resin.

flowers solitary, axillary and/or terminal on short shoots; male flowers drooping on slender glabrous sticky peduncles 1-3 mm long; calyx lobes ovate, 2.5-3 mm long, rotate, yellowish, turning brown later; stamens numerous, crowded; anther cells parallel, longer than wide, adnate to a broad entire connective; female flowers on conical peduncles to 2 mm long; calyx lobes ovate, to 2 mm long, glabrous, yellow-green, reddened in parts, more or less imbricate and enclosing the ovary apart from the stigmas;-ovary glabrous, submerged in sticky fluid; stigma 2-lobed, sessile, cup-shaped, entire.

fruit borne in persistent perianth-segments on subangular attenuate glabrous peduncles 2-3 mm long and c. 1.5 mm thick at the apex; capsule subglobose, 5.5-6 mm long, yellowish-green, glabrous, with a persistent black stigma; carpels 2, ovule 1 in each cell; seed obliquely oblong, c. 4 x 3 mm, slightly compressed, shiny, light-brown, more or less mottled dark-brown, topped by a yellow fleshy elevated caruncle.

	Beyeria opaca twig of male plant, male flower, twig of female plant female flower and seed.
Image source: fig 398b in Jessop J.P. & Toelken H.R. (Ed.) 1986. Flora of South Australia (4th edn).

Published illustration: Banks and Solander (1905) Ill. Aust. Pl. Cook's Voy. 3:t. 285; Cunningham et al. (1982) Plants of western New South Wales, p. 454.

Distribution:  In dune mallee communities. S.Aust.: LE, NU, GT, EP, MU, YP, SL.   W.Aust.; Qld; N.S.W.; Vic. Conservation status: native Flowering time: from June but mainly Sept. — Nov.

SA Distribution Map based on current data relating to specimens held in the State Herbarium of South Australia

Biology: No text

Author: Not yet available