Petrophile axillaris is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to southwestern Western Australia. It is a shrub with pinnately-divided, sharply-pointed leaves, and spherical heads of hairy pink or grey flowers.
Description
Petrophile axillaris is a shrub that typically grows to a height of 0.5–3 m (1 ft 8 in – 9 ft 10 in) and has ribbed, hairy, grey or brown branchlets. The leaves are pinnately-divided to the midrib, 20–30 mm (0.79–1.18 in) long with twenty-five to seventy-six cylindrical, sharply-pointed lobes. The flowers are mostly arranged in leaf axils in more or less spherical heads 15–25 mm (0.59–0.98 in) long and 17–28 mm (0.67–1.10 in) wide, with elliptic to egg-shaped involucral bracts at the base. The flowers are 14–18 mm (0.55–0.71 in) long, pink or grey and hairy. Flowering mainly occurs from September to November and the fruit is a nut, fused with others in a spherical to oval head 9–20 mm (0.35–0.79 in) long.[2][3]
^Meissner, Carl (1855). "New Proteaceae of Australia". Hooker's Journal of Botany and Kew Gardens Miscellany. 7: 68–69. Retrieved 2 December 2020.
^Sharr, Francis Aubi; George, Alex (2019). Western Australian Plant Names and Their Meanings (3rd ed.). Kardinya, WA: Four Gables Press. p. 141. ISBN9780958034180.
