Petrophile conifera is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to southwestern Western Australia. It is a bushy, much-branched shrub with pinnate, sharply-pointed leaves, and oval heads of hairy, cream-coloured to yellowish white flowers.
Petrophile conifera is a bushy, much-branched shrub that typically grows to a height of 0.3–1.5 m (1 ft 0 in – 4 ft 11 in) and has woolly-hairy young branchlets. The leaves are glabrous, 40–110 mm (1.6–4.3 in) long on a petiole 20–50 mm (0.79–1.97 in) long. They are rigid and needle-like, pinnately divided with sharply-pointed pinnae 4–35 mm (0.16–1.38 in) long. The flowers are arranged on the ends of branchlets in sessile, oval heads 20–30 mm (0.79–1.18 in) long, with hairy, lance-shaped involucral bracts at the base. The flowers are 8–15 mm (0.31–0.59 in) long, hairy, cream-coloured, creamy yellow or yellowish white. Flowering occurs from August to October and the fruit is a nut, fused with others in an oval head 10–30 mm (0.39–1.18 in) long.[2][3]
Petrophile conifera was first formally described in 1855 by Carl Meissner in Hooker's Journal of Botany and Kew Garden Miscellany from material collected by James Drummond.[4][5] The specific epithet (conifera) means "cone-bearing".[6]
In 2011, Michael Clyde Hislop and Kelly Anne Shepherd described two subspecies in the journal Nuytsia and the names are accepted by the Australian Plant Census:[7]
This petrophile grows in heath and on sandplains and is common north of Geraldton in the Avon Wheatbelt and Geraldton Sandplains biogeographic regions of southwestern Western Australia.[2][3] Subspecies conifera is found from Eurardy Reserve and Kalbarri National Park to the Chapman River near Geraldton and subsp. divaricata only occurs near Coorow.[7]
Petrophile conifera subsp. conifera is classified as "not threatened"[10] but subsp. divaricata is classified as "Priority Two" by the Western Australian Government Department of Parks and Wildlife,[11] meaning that it is poorly known and from only one or a few locations.[12]
Petrophile conifera is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to southwestern Western Australia. It is a bushy, much-branched shrub with pinnate, sharply-pointed leaves, and oval heads of hairy, cream-coloured to yellowish white flowers.
