''Pterocaulon sphacelatum'', commonly known as apple bush or fruit-salad plant, is a species of flowering plant in 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 ...

. It is an upright shrub with mostly pink to purple flowers and is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

to Australia.

Description

''Pterocaulon sphacelatum'' is a small understory, perennial herb or shrub to high, stiff upright stems and covered with short brownish woolly or short, matted dense hairs. The leaves are usually oblong to lance-shaped, pointed or nearly so, long, wide, green and hairy on both surfaces, somewhat wrinkled, a distinctive mid-vein, upper leaves slightly scalloped or entire, lower leaves toothed. The solitary flower heads are oval to globe-shaped, long, in diameter,

sessile Sessility, or sessile, may refer to: * Sessility (motility), organisms which are not able to move about * Sessility (botany), flowers or leaves that grow directly from the stem or peduncle of a plant * Sessility (medicine), tumors and polyps that ...

or on stalk. The outer

bract In botany, a bract is a modified or specialized leaf, associated with a reproductive structure such as a flower, inflorescence axis or cone scale. Bracts are usually different from foliage leaves in size, color, shape or texture. They also lo ...

s are spoon-shaped, inner bracts linear-lance shaped and whitish to pink and the florets pink to purple. Flowering occurs from July to October and the fruit is a brown spindle-shaped

achene An achene (; ), also sometimes called akene and occasionally achenium or achenocarp, is a type of simple fruit, simple dry fruits, dry fruit produced by many species of flowering plants. Achenes are monocarpellate (formed from one carpel) and Dehi ...

about long, covered in about 15-20 bristles and slightly ribbed. The "applebush" is an aromatic plant is used in

Australian Aboriginal Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Mainland Australia, Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands. Humans first migrated to Australia (co ...

medicine.Antiviral flavonoid from Pterocaulon sphacelatum
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Taxonomy and naming

The species was first formally described by

Jacques Labillardière Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardière (28 October 1755 – 8 January 1834) was a French biologist noted for his descriptions of the flora of Australia. Labillardière was a member of a voyage in search of the Jean-François de Galaup, comte ...

as ''Monenteles sphacelatus''. In 1882

Ferdinand von Mueller Baron Sir Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller, (; 30 June 1825 – 10 October 1896) was a German-Australian physician, geographer, and most notably, a botanist. He was appointed government botanist for the then colony of Victoria, Australia ...

changed the name to ''Pterocaulon sphacelatum'' and attributed the change to

George Bentham George Bentham (22 September 1800 – 10 September 1884) was an English botanist, described by the weed botanist Duane Isely as "the premier systematic botanist of the nineteenth century". Born into a distinguished family, he initially studie ...

and the description was published in ''

Systematic Census of Australian Plants The ''Systematic census of Australian plants, with chronologic, literary and geographic annotations'', more commonly known as the ''Systematic Census of Australian Plants'', also known by its standard botanic abbreviation ''Syst. Census Austral. ...

''. The

specific epithet In Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin gramm ...

(''sphacelatum'') means "brown or blackish speckling".

Distribution and habitat

Applebush grows in a variety of habitats, mostly on occasional flooded locations, disturbed sites including roadsides in Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and the Northern Territory.

References

sphacelatum Asterales of Australia Medicinal plants Flora of Queensland Eudicots of Western Australia Flora of South Australia Flora of the Northern Territory {{Australia-asterid-stub