Persoonia mollis, commonly known as soft geebung,[2] is a plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to New South Wales. It is an erect to prostrate shrub with linear to oblong or spatula-shaped leaves, yellow flowers in groups of up to thirty on a rachis up to 150 mm (5.9 in) long and relatively small fruit.
Soft geebung | |
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Persoonia mollis subsp. livens Penrose National Park | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Plantae |
Clade: | Tracheophytes |
Clade: | Angiosperms |
Clade: | Eudicots |
Order: | Proteales |
Family: | Proteaceae |
Genus: | Persoonia |
Species: | P. mollis
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Binomial name | |
Persoonia mollis | |
Synonyms[1] | |
Persoonia mollis is an erect to prostrate shrub that typically grows to a height of 0.2–5 m (7.9 in – 16 ft 4.9 in) and has smooth bark and young branchlets that are covered with greyish to rust-coloured hairs. The leaves are linear, oblong to lance-shaped or spatula-shaped, 15–120 mm (0.59–4.72 in) long, 0.8–17 mm (0.031–0.669 in) wide and much paler on the lower surface. The flowers are arranged in groups of up to thirty along a rachis up to 150 mm (5.9 in) long that grows into a leafy shoot after flowering, each flower on a pedicel about 1–3 mm (0.039–0.118 in) long, usually with a leaf at the base. The tepals are yellow, 8–11.5 mm (0.31–0.45 in) long and hairy on the outside. Flowering mostly occurs from late December to May and the fruit is a green drupe about 8 mm (0.31 in) long and 7 mm (0.28 in) wide.[2][3][4][5]
Persoonia mollis was first formally described in 1810 by Robert Brown in Transactions of the Linnean Society of London.[6][7]
In 1991, Siegfried Krauss and Lawrie Johnson described nine subspecies of P. mollis in the journal Telopea, and the names are accepted by the Australian Plant Census:
Soft geebung grows from heath to forest, usually on sandstone, from the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury River south to the Clyde River.