Maireana aphylla

File:Maireana aphylla habit.jpg

Habit

File:Maireana aphylla stems.jpg

Details of stems

Maireana aphylla, commonly known as cotton bush or leafless bluebush, is a species of flowering plant in the family Chenopodiaceae and is endemic to Australia. It is a widely branched, mostly dioecious shrub with small, woolly leaves, flowers arranged singly, and a fruiting perianth with a small tube and horizontal wings.

Description

Maireana aphylla is a widely branched shrub that typically grows to Template:Cvt high and about Template:Cvt wide. Its branchlets are sometimes covered with woolly hairs and are often spiny. The leaves are arranged alternately, more or less terete, fleshy, Template:Cvt long, usually covered with woolly hair, and often fall off as they mature. The flowers are mostly dioecious and arranged singly, sometimes with tiny bracteoles at the base. Male flowers are bell-shaped, about Template:Cvt high and slightly woolly. Female flowers are more or less spherical, about Template:Cvt high with a prominent radiating bulge, a glabrous ovary and two stigmas. The fruiting perianth is straw-coloured, mostly glabrous with a hemispherial to top-shaped tube Template:Cvt high with a prominent bulge and a horizontal wing about Template:Cvt in diameter. Flowering mostly occurs from December to April, and the fruit is a hemispherical utricle.

Taxonomy

This species was first formally described in 1810 by Robert Brown who gave it the name Kochia aphylla in his Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae. In 1975, Paul Graham Wilson transferred the species to Maireana as M. aphylla in the journal Nuytsia. The specific epithet (aphylla) means 'without leaves'.

Distribution and habitat

Cotton bush occurs in all mainland states and territories apart from the Australian Capital Territory. It grows in seasonally inundated clay soils west of the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales, in southern Queensland, the southern half of the Northern Territory and in the Carnarvon-Wiluna area of Western Australia.