Species of plant
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Pimelea microcephala, commonly known as mallee rice-flower or shrubby rice-flower is a species of flowering plant in the family Thymelaeaceae and is endemic to mainland Australia. It is an erect shrub with compact heads of male or female, white to yellow or greenish flowers on separate plants, the heads surrounded by 2 or 4 leaf-like involucral bracts.
Description.
"Pimelea microcephala" is an erect, dioecious shrub that typically grows to a height of and has glabrous stems. Its leaves are arranged in opposite pairs, linear to more or less narrowly elliptic, mostly long and wide on a short petiole. The flowers are white to yellow or greenish and arranged on the ends of branches in compact heads on a peduncle long. The flowers are glabrous inside and usually densely curly-hairy on the outside, on a hairy pedicel. Male flowers are in heads of 8 to 100 flowers, the floral tube long. Female flowers are in heads of 7 to 12, each long. The sepals are long and the stamens of male flowers are shorter than the sepals. Flowering mainly occurs from April to September and the fruit is a succulent, red nut.
Taxonomy.
"Pimelea microcephala" was first formally described by Robert Brown in "Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae" in 1810.
In 1983 S. Threlfall described two subspecies of "P. microcephala" in the journal "Brunonia", and the names are accepted by the Australian Plant Census:
Distribution and habitat.
Mallee rice-flower grows in shrubland, woodland and mallee, and is widespread in all mainland states of Australia and in the Northern Territory. It is found in the north-west of Victoria, in inland New South Wales, in the south of the Northern Territory and in the Avon Wheatbelt, Carnarvon, Coolgardie, Gascoyne, Geraldton Sandplains, Great Victoria Desert, Mallee, Murchison Nullarbor, Pilbara and Yalgoo bioregions of Western Australia.
Subspecies "glabra" is restricted to the north-west of South Australia.
References.
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