Melichrus urceolatus
species of plant
Melichrus urceolatus, commonly known as urn heath, honey gorse or cream urn-heath, is a species of flowering plant in the family Ericaceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is an erect shrub with narrowly lance-shaped leaves with deep grooves on the lower surface, white, cream-coloured or yellowish-green flowers, sometimes with a red or rose-pink tinge, and spherical greenish-white or purplish-brown fruit.
Description
Melichrus urceolatus is an erect, stiffly-branched shrub that typically grows to a height of 0.2–1.5 m (7.9 in – 4 ft 11.1 in), forms a lignotuber and has branchlets with soft hairs. The leaves are narrowly lance-shaped, 8–25 mm (0.31–0.98 in) long and 1.5–4.2 mm (0.059–0.165 in) wide, with a prominent mid-vein and deep grooves on the lower surface. The flowers are more or less sessile or on a short peduncle with five to eight egg-shaped bracts, and bracteoles 2.5–4.0 mm (0.098–0.157 in) long. The sepals are egg-shaped to elliptic, 4.5–6 mm (0.18–0.24 in) long and the petals are usually cream-coloured or yellowish-green flowers, sometimes with a red or rose-pink tinge, forming a tube 2.0–3.5 mm (0.079–0.138 in) long with slightly hairy lobes 3–4 mm (0.12–0.16 in) long. It flowers from March to November and the fruit is a flattened spherical, greenish-white or purplish-brown drupe about 4 mm (0.16 in) long.
Taxonomy
Melichrus urceolatus was first formally described in 1810 by botanist Robert Brown in his Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae. The specific epithet (urceolatus) means 'urn-shaped'.
Distribution and habitat
This species of Melichrus is found in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, where it grows in forest, woodland and mallee scrub.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Melichrus urceolatus” as species of plant. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of plant. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q73510. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1810.
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This entry incorporates text from “Melichrus urceolatus” 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.