''Isopogon heterophyllus'' is a plant in the family

Proteaceae The Proteaceae form a family of flowering plants predominantly distributed in the Southern Hemisphere. The family comprises 83 genera with about 1,660 known species. Together with the Platanaceae and Nelumbonaceae, they make up the order Pro ...

and is endemic to the southwest of Western Australia. It is a shrub with simple or pinnate, cylindrical leaves and hairy, usually pink flowers.

Description

''Isopogon heterophyllus'' is a shrub that typically grows to a height of with smooth brown or reddish brown branchlets. The leaves are up to about long, prickly, variably simple, pinnate or bipinnate, the segments up to long. The flowers are arranged in spherical, sessile heads about long in diameter on the ends of branchlets, each head with usually pink, sometimes lilac to mauve flowers up to about long, the heads with egg-shaped

involucral bracts In botany, a bract is a modified or specialized leaf, especially one associated with a reproductive structure such as a flower, inflorescence axis or cone scale. Bracts are usually different from foliage leaves. They may be smaller, larger, ...

at the base. Flowering occurs from August to November and the fruit is a hairy nut up to long, fused in a cone-shaped to spherical head in diameter.

Taxonomy and naming

''Isopogon heterophyllus'' was first formally described in 1845 by Carl Meissner in Johann Georg Christian Lehmann's book '' Plantae Preissianae''. In 2017,

Rye Rye (''Secale cereale'') is a grass grown extensively as a grain, a cover crop and a forage crop. It is a member of the wheat tribe (Triticeae) and is closely related to both wheat (''Triticum'') and barley (genus ''Hordeum''). Rye grain is u ...

and Hislop proposed that ''I. heteropyllus'' is a

synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...

of ''

Isopogon formosus ''Isopogon formosus'', commonly known as rose coneflower, is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to the south-west of Western Australia. It is a shrub with divided leaves with cylindrical segments, and spheric ...

'' subsp. ''formosus'' but their claim has not been assessed by the Australian Plant Census as at November 2020.

Distribution and habitat

This isopogon grows in open woodland and shrubland and is common and widespread between Cranbrook, Albany, the Stirling Range National Park and Esperance.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q21277857 heterophyllus Eudicots of Western Australia Plants described in 1845 Taxa named by Carl Meissner