Zieria adenodonta

Location & distribution maps

Common name:         ...

Conservation status: ...

Etymology:   

• The name Zieria honours "John Zier, a Polish botanist, who assisted F.C. Ehrhart in his collection of plants of the Electorate of Hanover, 1780-83, and afterwards worked in London, where he died in 1793"

• The specific epithet (adenodonta) is derived from the Ancient Greek words aden meaning "gland"  and odous meaning "tooth"

Flowers

• The flowers are white and are arranged in upper leaf axils, usually in groups of five to eight, but sometimes as many as 27

• The groups are usually shorter than the leaves

• There are four more or less hairy, triangular sepal lobes less than 1.0 mm long

• The four petals are about 2.5 mm long and slightly hairy

• In common with other zierias, there are only four stamens

• Flowering occurs from May to September 

Fruit:                            

• The fruit which is a yellow-brown, egg-shaped capsule containing one black seed

Leaves:         

• The leaves are composed of three leaflets with the central one, 10–20 mm long and 1.5–3 mm wide with a stalk 3–7 mm long

• The leaflets are dark green and warty on the upper surface, light green and not wary on the lower side

• The edges of the leaflets are slightly rolled under and have small teeth

• They have an unpleasant smell when crushed

Stem & branches: 

Roots:         

Habit:        

• A dense, bushy shrub which grows to a height of 3 m and has warty branchlets

Habitat:   

• Dense shrubby vegetation on steep slopes

Distribution:                  

• Occurs in the Lamington National Park in Queensland and on Mount Warning in NSW

Additional notes:   

• Taxonomy and naming

  • Wollumbin zieria was first formally described in 1875 by Ferdinand von Mueller who gave it the name Zieria granulata var. adenodonta and published the description in Fragmenta phytographiae Australiae

  • In 2002, James Armstrong raised it to species status and published the change in Australian Systematic Botany

Sources of information:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zieria_adenodonta (2024)