Styphelia xerophylla
Species of flowering plants
Styphelia xerophylla is a species of flowering plant in the heath family Ericaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is an erect, compact shrub with egg-shaped to narrowly egg-shaped leaves and white, tube-shaped flowers with hairy lobes.
Description
Styphelia xerophylla is an erect, compact shrub that typically grows up to 60 cm (24 in) high and wide, with hairy branchlets from near the base of the plant. The leaves are narrowly egg-shaped to egg-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, 5–20 mm (0.20–0.79 in) long and 1.6–3.8 mm (0.063–0.150 in) wide, with a sharply pointed tip. The flowers are born singly in leaf axils, with bracts 1.8–2.8 mm (0.071–0.110 in) and bracteoles 3.0–4.2 mm (0.12–0.17 in) long at the base. The sepals are 7.5–9.0 mm (0.30–0.35 in) long and 3.0–4.3 mm (0.12–0.17 in) wide. The petals are white, joined at the base forming a tube 6.0–8.2 mm (0.24–0.32 in) long and with lobes that are shorter than the tube, 4.0–5.2 mm (0.16–0.20 in) long and densely hairy.
Taxonomy
This species was first formally described in 1839 by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle who gave it the name Stomarrhena xerophylla in his Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis from specimens collected near the Swan River Colony by James Drummond. In 1867, Ferdinand von Mueller transferred the species to Styphelia as S. xerophylla in his Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae. The specific epithet (xerophylla) means "dry-" or "parched-leaved".
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Styphelia xerophylla” as species of flowering plants. 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 flowering plants. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 22, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q65950217. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1839 and 1867.
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This entry incorporates text from “Styphelia xerophylla” 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.