Petrophile sessilis



Petrophile sessilis, known as conesticks, is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to New South Wales. It is an erect shrub with rigid, needle-shaped, divided, sharply-pointed leaves, and oval, spike-like heads of silky-hairy, creamy-yellow flowers.

Description
Petrophile sessilis is an erect shrub that typically grows to a height of 3 m and has branchlets and leaves that are silky-hairy when young but become glabrous with age. The leaves are 30–100 mm long and divided with rigid, sharply-pointed, needle-shaped pinnae usually less than 10 mm long. The flowers are arranged on the ends of branchlets and in leaf axils in spike-like, oval heads 20–25 mm long, with broadly egg-shaped involucral bracts at the base. The flowers are 10–14 mm long, silky-hairy and creamy-yellow. Flowering mainly occurs from May to February and the fruit is a nut, fused with others in a oval head up to 35 mm long. It can be distinguished from the related Petrophile pulchella by its finely hairy new growth.

Taxonomy
Petrophile sessilis was first formally described in 1827 by Josef August Schultes in the 16th edition of Systema Vegetabilium from an unpublished description by Franz Sieber.

Distribution and habitat
Petrophile sessilis grows on sandstone soils in heath, woodland and forest from the Central Coast to the Central and Southern Tablelands of New South Wales.