Stemodia glabella
W.R.BarkerFaintly scented perennial herbs to c. 40 cm high, tending to sucker; branches erect, glabrous and almost or entirely lacking glands, but pedicels and sepals with minute glandular hairs (and sometimes sessile glands and/or eglandular hairs). Basal leaves lanceolate to linear, to 2–5 cm long, 1–5 mm wide, glabrous, margins toothed. Flowers single in axils of leaf-like bracts; pedicels 8–25 mm long. Sepals 4–6 mm long; corolla 6–12 mm long, blue-purple, lower lip spreading, somewhat recurved, with 2 long white, rarely suffused, streaks behind the lower clefts. Capsule 5–6 mm long. Flower most of year (following rain).
LoM, MuM, Wim, MSB, RobP, MuF. All mainland states. Apparently very rare in Victoria where known with certainty only from clay soils on banks or floodplains of the Murray River near Cohuna, Kerang and Piangil areas and the extreme north-west corner of the State.
Stemodia glabella in eastern Australia encompasses several variants, possibly warranting formal recognition, differing in flowers being subsessile or long pedicellate, upper leaves small and/or narrow or long and relatively broad, and sepal indumentum varying in presence and extent of gland dots, aculeate excrescences and tiny glandular hairs.
Barker, W.R. (1999). Scrophulariaceae. In: Walsh, N.G.; Entwisle, T.J., Flora of Victoria Vol. 4, Cornaceae to Asteraceae, pp. 483–528. Inkata Press, Melbourne.
Spinning
