''Scaevola tenuifolia'' is a species of flowering plant in the family

Goodeniaceae Goodeniaceae is a family of flowering plants in the order Asterales. It contains about 404 species in twelve genera. The family is distributed mostly in Australia, except for the genus '' Scaevola'', which is pantropical. Its species are found ac ...

. It is a prostrate herb with white to blue flowers and

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 Western Australia.

Description

''Scaevola tenuifolia'' is a prostrate herb to in diameter with horizontal branches covered in rigid, short, stiff, simple hairs and smaller, red, glandular hairs. The leaves are linear-shaped, rolled under, sometimes toothed near the apex, sessile, long and wide. The flowers are on a curved peduncle up to long,

bracts 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 loo ...

leaf-like, triangular to linear shaped and long. The white, blue to pale purple corolla is long, wide, white hairs on the outer surface, thickly bearded on the inside,

wings A wing is a type of fin that produces both lift and drag while moving through air. Wings are defined by two shape characteristics, an airfoil section and a planform. Wing efficiency is expressed as lift-to-drag ratio, which compares the bene ...

wide and long. Flowering occurs from August to January and the fruit is elliptic-shaped, about long, ribbed, and covered with long, upright hairs.

Taxonomy and naming

''Scaevola tenuifolia'' was first formally described in 1990

Roger Charles Carolin Roger Charles Carolin (15 October 1929 – 3 February 2025) was an Australian botanist and pteridologist. He was appointed a lecturer in botany at the University of Sydney in 1955 earned a Ph.D. from Sydney University in 1962 with a thesis on t ...

and the description was published in '' Telopea''. 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 ...

(''tenuifolia'') means "narrow flowered".

Distribution and habitat

This scaevola grows in quartzite soils on East Mount Barren and Thumb Peak range.

References

{{Taxonbar, from1=Q17480677 tenuifolia Flora of Western Australia