Lissanthe strigosa



Lissanthe strigosa, commonly known as peach heath, is a species of flowering plant in the family Ericaceae, and is endemic to south-eastern Australia. It is a shrub with linear to lance-shaped leaves and white to pink, cylindrical flowers.

Description
Lissanthe strigosa is a much-branched shrub 10–100 cm high, and often forms suckers, its branchlets covered with tiny bristles. The leaves are linear to lance-shaped, 6.5–13.9 mm long and 0.7–2.0 mm wide on a petiole 0.8–1.3 mm long with three longitudinal ribs on the lower surface. The flowers are borne in racemes of 5 to 9 with bracteoles 0.8–1.0 mm long at the base. The sepals are 1.1–1.2 mm long and the petal are white or pink and joined at the base, forming a more or less glabrous tube 3.5–4 mm long with lobes about 1.5–2.4 mm long. The style is 2.6–3.1 mm long and covered with soft hairs near its base. Flowering occurs from August to November and the fruit is a flattened spherical, capsule 2.5–2.9 mm long, white and fleshy.

Taxonomy
This species was first formally described in 1793 by James Edward Smith who gave it the name Styphelia strigosa in a A Specimen of the Botany of New Holland. In 1810, Robert Brown transferred the species to Lissanthe as L. strigosa in his Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae. The specific epithet means strigose.

In 1994, Jocelyn Powell described two subspecies of L. strigosa in the journal Telopea, and the names are accepted by the Australian Plant Census:
 * Lissanthe strigosa (Sm.) R.Br. subsp. strigosa has leaves 3.4–5.8 mm long and 0.5–0.8 mm wide.
 * Lissanthe strigosa subsp. subulata (R.Br.) J.M.Powell has leaves 6.1–16.5 mm long and 0.7–2.2 mm wide.

Distribution and habitat
Peach heath is widely distributed in Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia, where it grows in forest, scrub and heath on sandy soils. Subspecies strigosa is restricted to the Central Coast of New South Wales, where it grows in poorly-drained clay soils. Subspecies subulata is found in eastern New South Wales and as far east as the Pilliga forest and in Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia.