- Plants
- ›Vascular Plants
- ›flowering plants
- ›Dicots
- ›Heathers, Balsams, Primroses, and Allies
- ›heath family
- ›Epacrids, Styphelias and Allies
- ›Epacrideae
- ›Epacris
Coral Heath
Epacris microphylla
Epacris microphylla , commonly known as coral heath, is a plant in the heath family Ericaceae and which is endemic to eastern Australia. It is a common, wiry shrub with tiny leaves that are often obscured by the flowers, especially near the ends of the stems. The plant sometimes grows in dense groups, giving the effect of a snowfall.
From the article Epacris microphylla on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
Description
Coral heath is an erect, wiry shrub with rod-like stems and angled branches, usually growing to a height of 1 metre (3 ft). The leaves are about 2.0–3.5 millimetres (0.08–0.1 in) long and wide, concave and egg-shaped to almost circular and sharply pointed but not prickly. The flowers are arranged singly in the axils of as many as 90 of the upper leaves, often almost covering 40 centimetres (20 in) of the ends of the branches. The petals form a tube with spreading lobes 1.5–2.0 millimetres (0.06–0.08 in) long and are white with five red anthers visible in the centre. Flowers are present for most of the year, but the main flowering period is July to November.
Range & habitat
Coral heath grows in heathland in moist, rocky areas and in forest areas. It occurs in coastal areas in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, often in poor, sandy soils. It is also only known in a single locality in New Zealand, on the southern shore of the Manukau Harbour, near Auckland.
Wikipedia: “Distribution and habitat”
How it is grown
Epacris microphylla is an attractive and hardy garden plant as long as it is grown in well-drained soil. It is difficult to propagate from seed but can be grown from semi-hard tip cuttings.
== References ==
Wikipedia: “Use in horticulture”
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
—
geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Epacris microphylla in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 321118.