Leucopogon melaleucoides



Leucopogon melaleucoides is a species of flowering plant in the heath family Ericaceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is an erect, densely branched shrub with lance-shaped or egg-shaped leaves, and white, tube-shaped flowers arranged in spikes in upper leaf axils.

Description
Leucopogon melaleucoides is an erect, densely branched shrub that typically grows to a height of 0.7–1 m, and has softly-hairy branchlets. The leaves are lance-shaped to egg-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, 5–20.8 mm long and 0.6–2.8 mm wide on a petiole up to 1 mm long. The leaves are more or less glabrous and the lower surface is finely striated. The flowers are arranged in leaf axils in spikes of 3 to 15, up to 23 mm long, with bracteoles 1.15–1.3 mm long at the base. The sepals are 1.9–2.4 mm long, the petals white and joined at the base to form a tube 1.9–2.8 mm long with lobes 2.5–3.0 mm long. Flowering occurs from June to November and the fruit is a glabrous, oval drupe 2.5–2.8 mm long.

Taxonomy
Leucopogon melaleucoides was first formally described in 1839 by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle in his Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis, from an unpublished description by Allan Cunningham from specimens he collected near the Hunter River. The specific epithet (melaleucoides) means "melaleuca-like".

Distribution and habitat
This leucopogon grows in the understorey of open woodland in south-eastern Queensland to as far south as Guyra in New South Wales.