Leucopogon muticus, commonly known as blunt beard-heath, is a species of flowering plant in the heath family Ericaceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is an erect, straggling shrub with egg-shaped leaves with the narrower end towards the base, and small numbers of white, tube-shaped flowers that are densely bearded inside.
Description
Leucopogon muticus is an erect, straggling shrub that typically grows to a height of up to , and has softly-hairy branchlets. Its leaves are egg-shaped leaves with the narrower end towards the base, long and wide on a petiole long. The leaves are flat with 3 to 5 parallel veins. The flowers are arranged in spikes of 4 to 10 up to long in leaf axils on a peduncle about long with bracteoles long at the base. The sepals are long, the petals joined at the base to form a tube long with lobes long and densely bearded inside. Flowering mainly occurs from September to October and the fruit is a bristly, black, elliptic drupe long.
Taxonomy
Leucopogon muticus was first formally described in 1810 by Robert Brown in his Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen. The specific epithet (muticus) means "blunt".
Distribution and habitat
Blunt beard-heath grows in heath and forest on slopes and ridges from sea level to an altitude of in south-east Queensland and in eastern New South Wales as far south as Cooma.
References
muticus
Flora of Queensland
Flora of New South Wales
Plants described in 1810
Taxa named by Robert Brown (botanist, born 1773)