Epacris lanuginosa



Epacris lanuginosa, commonly known as woolly-style heath, is a species of flowering plant in the family Ericaceae and is endemic to south-eastern Australia. It is a slender, erect shrub with hairy branchlets, linear to lance-shaped leaves, and tube-shaped, white flowers crowded along the ends of the branches.

Description
Epacris lanuginosa is a slender, erect shrub that typically growing to a height of up to about 1.6 mand has woolly-hairy branchlets. The leaves are crowded, linear to lance-shaped, 5–13 mm long, 0.6–3 mm wide and sessile or on a petiole up to 1 mm long. The flowers are arranged on the ends of branches or along the upper 10 cm of the branches in leaf axils, each flower with up to thirteen to thirty bracts at the base. The sepals are lance-shaped, 4.5–7.5 mm long, the petal tube cylindrical to narrowly bell-shaped, 4.5–8 mm long with lobes 2.7–4 mm long. The anthers are enclosed in the petal tube. Flowering mainly occurs from August to January.

Taxonomy
Epacris lanuginosa was first formally described in 1805 by Jacques Labillardière in his Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen. The specific epithet (lanuginosa) means "abounding in wool".

Distribution and habitat
Woolly-style heath is common in boggy places in Tasmania, but also occurs in wet heath, scrub and forest at low elevations, in southern and western Victoria and the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales.

Ecology
Epacris lanuginosa is susceptible to the exotic fungal rot root disease caused by Phytophthora cinnamomi.