 Photo © I.Holliday |
 Photo © I.Holliday |
 Photo © I.Holliday |
 Photo © I.Holliday |
Synonymy
Hakea lasiantha R.Br., Suppl. Prodr. Fl. Nov. Holl. 29 (1830)
T: interior of King George Sound, [Western Australia], 1828/9, W.Baxter s.n.; syn: BM, K, NY.
An image of the NY type specimen can be seen on the New York Botanical Garden site.
Description
Erect branched shrub, 0.6–3 m tall, non-lignotuberous. Branchlets and young leaves woolly-tomentose, ferruginous. Leaves flat, elliptic or obovate, sometimes narrowly so, 2.8–6.3 cm long, 7–17 mm wide, attenuate or rounded, entire, rounded apically.
Inflorescence with 3–8 flowers; involucre 5 mm long; pedicels 4–8 mm long, ferruginous woolly-tomentose. Perianth 5.5–9 mm long, cream-white or yellow-brown woolly-tomentose. Pistil 7.5–9.5 mm long; pollen presenter 1–1.4 mm long; gland 0.2 mm high.
Fruit leaf-like, obliquely narrowly elliptic, 2.6–3.2 cm long, 1–1.1 cm wide, smooth, not beaked. Seed obliquely narrowly obovate, 20–23 mm long; wing partly down only one side of seed body, or apical only.
Distribution and ecology
Occurs in area bounded by Gordon R., the Stirling Ra., Cape Riche and Albany in Western Australia, in mallee scrub on sand, sandy gravel or sandy clay.
To plot an up to date distribution map based on herbarium collections for this species see Australia's Virtual Herbarium. Localities outside the native range may represent cultivated or naturalised records.
Flowering time
Flowers Mar.–Sept.
Derivation of name
From lasios, Greek for hairy or woolly, and anthos, Greek for flower, a reference to the flowers noticeably covered with white woolly hairs in this species.
Relationships
Part of Section Hakea of Bentham (as Euhakea) and characterised by a non-conical pollen presenter, leaves without obvious venation, perianths with or without hairs and fruits with or without horns. Barker et al. (1999) recognised a number of informal morphological groups within the section.
The Trifurcata group all share the characteristics of compound-terete leaves, pubescent pedicel and perianth, lateral pollen presenter and non-woody, non-horned, camouflaged fruits which are not retained for any length of time on the bushes.
Members of the group are H. erinacea, H. lasiantha, H. lasianthoides, H. longiflora and H. trifurcata , all from SW WA. The monophyly or otherwise of the group has still to be tested.
Notes
Specimens with cream-white hairs on the perianth from the Stirling Ra. (and one specimen from Albany) are not separable in any other way from the more typical specimens with yellow-brown hairs from more southerly regions.
Very closely related to H. lasianthoides, but differing from it by the pedicels and perianth with differently coloured hairs (same colour in H. lasianthoides ), the usually wider leaves, the raised hairs in the young parts and in distribution and flowering time.
There are some specimens from Bullsbrook and Collie area which erode the differences between H. lasiantha and H. lasianthoides , particularly by having ferruginous hairs on the pedicel and perianth. These specimens have been referred to as Hakea sp. walyunga in some literature (Young 2006) and in FloraBase as Hakea sp. Walyunga (Penn s.n.)
Representative specimens
Western Australia: W foot of Mt Manypeaks, R.Melville 4443 (CANB, NSW, PERTH); Stirling Ra., c. 3 km NW of Bluff Knoll, A.Strid 22480 (G, M, PERTH).
Weblinks
Link to FloraBase treatment of this species for WA.
More photographs of this species can be seen on the Australian National Botanic Gardens site.
Further illustrations
I. Holliday, Hakeas. A Field and Garden Guide 100-01 (2005)
J.A..Young, Hakeas of Western Australia. A Field and Identification Guide 56 (2006)