Melaleuca capitata
species of plant

Melaleuca capitata is a shrub in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae and is endemic to New South Wales. It has scaly bark, a densely foliaged habit and attractive heads of creamy-yellow flowers on the ends of its branches in summer.
Description
Melaleuca capitata grows to 2 m (7 ft) tall and about 1.5 m (5 ft) wide and has very hairy young branches. Its leaves are glabrous, narrow elliptical in shape, 10–25 mm (0.4–1 in) long, 1–3 mm (0.04–0.1 in) wide and taper to a sharp point.
The flowers are cream-colored and grouped in a short spike or a head at the ends of the branches which continue to grow after flowering. Each head contains 3 to 15 flowers and can be as large as 35 mm (1 in) in diameter. The stamens are arranged in five bundles around the flower and there are 15 to 33 stamens in each bundle. Flowering occurs between October and December and is followed by fruit which are woody capsules. These are spherical to urn-shaped, about 5–7 mm (0.2–0.3 in) long and arranged in loose clusters along the stem.
Taxonomy and naming
Melaleuca capitata was first formally described in 1924 by Edwin Cheel in Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales from specimens collected in or near the present day Morton and Budawang national parks.
“Melaleuca capitata” enters the record as species of plant. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Melaleuca, capitata and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Melaleuca capitata” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Melaleuca, capitata and species provides the most credible route into that argument.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15370130. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1924.
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This entry incorporates text from “Melaleuca capitata” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.