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Leptospermum rodwayanum Summerhayes & Comber

Modern name

Leptospermum grandiflorum Lodd.

An evergreen shrub 10 ft high, of spreading habit, young shoots covered with fine grey down. Leaves grey-green, obovate to narrowly oval, 13 to 1 in. long, 18 to 38 in. wide, tapered to a very short stalk, pointed or rounded at the apex, at first with minute white hairs beneath and pitted with tiny dark glands. Flowers solitary, terminal on short lateral twigs, pure white, scarcely stalked, 114 in. wide, the mainly orbicular petals contracted to a short stalk. Receptacle obconical, densely white-pubescent; sepals ovate, covered with fine white down, and with membranous margins. Fruits woody, persisting many years, broadly top-shaped 38 to 12 in. wide, scaly on the flatly rounded summit.

Native of Tasmania; introduced by Comber in 1930. Plants were raised from his seeds at Nymans, Handcross, Sussex, and flowering shoots were shown by Colonel Messel at Vincent Square on 5 August 1936.

There seems to be some confusion between this species and L. grandiflorum Lodd. The plant so named by Loddiges (Bot. Cab., t. 723) almost certainly belongs to L. flavescens, under which Bentham placed it as a variety – L. flavescens var. grandiflorum (Lodd.) Benth. The confusion may arise from the fact that a specimen in the Kew Herbarium with receptacle and sepals glabrous has been named L. rodwayanum though it would seem to belong to L. flavescens. In L. rodwayanum the receptacle is densely appressed white pubescent and the sepals slightly pubescent.


Genus

Leptospermum

Other species in the genus