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Electronic Flora of South Australia species Fact Sheet

Family: Amaranthaceae
Maireana georgei

Citation: Paul G. Wilson, Nuytsia 2:33 (1975).

Synonymy: Kochia georgei Diels in Diels & E. Pritzel, Bot. Jb. 35:184 (1904).

Common name: Satiny bluebush.

Description:
Compact rounded shrub to 50 cm high; branches closely woolly; leaves alternate, slender and semiterete, 8-15 rarely to 30 mm long, fleshy, sparsely to densely silky or almost glabrous.

Flowers solitary.

Fruiting perianth glabrous except for the woolly margin to the lobes; tube turbinate, somewhat laterally compressed, very thick-walled, the upper half fleshy on the outside when fresh and becoming wrinkled on drying, base solid and rounded, c. 6 mm high and wide (at the apex); wing horizontal, 15-20 mm diam., thin, faintly veined, with a single radial slit; upper perianth flat, style massive, hemispherical, hard, included within the perianth.

image of FSA1_Maireana_geo.jpg Maireana georgei fruit
Image source: fig. 159o in Jessop J.P. & Toelken H.R. (Ed.) 1986. Flora of South Australia (4th edn).

Published illustration: Cochrane et al. (1968) Flowers and plants of Victoria, fig. 139; Cunningham et al. (1982) Plants of western New South Wales, p. 269.

Distribution:  S.Aust.: NW, LE, NU, GT, FR, EA, EP, MU.   W.Aust.; N.T.; Qld; N.S.W.; Vic.

Conservation status: native

Flowering time: Flowers and/or fruits: all months.


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

Biology: A very variable species which hybridises with Enchylaena tomentosa. It may be readily distinguishable from M. turbinata (with which it has been confused) by the wrinkled tube to the fruit (not smooth all over) and the radial split in the wing (not entire).

Author: Not yet available


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