''Acanthocladium dockeri'' is a critically endangered species of the family

Asteraceae Asteraceae () is a large family (biology), family of flowering plants that consists of over 32,000 known species in over 1,900 genera within the Order (biology), order Asterales. The number of species in Asteraceae is rivaled only by the Orchi ...

that belongs to the

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unisp ...

genus ''Acanthocladium''. It is commonly known as spiny everlasting or spiny daisy. It is native to

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

, and is found around the

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...

n town of Laura.

Description

The spiny everlasting is a woody

perennial In horticulture, the term perennial ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the year") is used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. It has thus been defined as a plant that lives more than 2 years. The term is also ...

shrub A shrub or bush is a small to medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees by their multiple ...

with spines at branch ends, covered in short white hair. It bears oblong, bumpy fruit. Spiny everlasting was presumed extinct in 1992, having suffered habitat loss from clearance for winter crops, but various colonies of it have been found around Laura, near the

Spencer Gulf The Spencer Gulf is the westernmost and larger of two large inlets (the other being Gulf St Vincent) on the southern coast of Australia, in the state of South Australia, facing the Great Australian Bight. It spans from the Cape Catastrophe an ...

Homonym

In 1883,

William Mitten William Mitten (30 November 1819 – 20 July 1906) was an English people, English pharmaceutical chemist and authority on bryophytes who has been called "the premier bryologist of the second half of the nineteenth century". He built up a colle ...

used the same name, ''Acanthocladium'', to refer to a group of mosses, now in the family Sematophyllaceae. Several dozen species of mosses were described and place in this genus before it was realized that Mittenn's name represented an illegitimate

homonym In linguistics, homonyms are words which are either; '' homographs''—words that mean different things, but have the same spelling (regardless of pronunciation), or '' homophones''—words that mean different things, but have the same pronunciat ...

. The moss genus has since been renamed '' Wijkia'' H.A. Crum.Tropicos Acanthocladium Mitt.
/ref>

References

Bibliography

* * Gnaphalieae Monotypic Asteraceae genera Flora of South Australia Taxa named by Ferdinand von Mueller {{Gnaphalieae-stub