Tetratheca juncea

A prostrate-sprawling and flexible, soft-wooded shrub, with winged-stems to 1 metre long, covered in minute warts. It grows in clumps, spreading through buried stems.

It has a restricted distribution in the wild, growing south from Buladelah in NSW, through the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie areas to about Wyong. There are records in Sydney at Botany Bay and around Port Jackson, but the species is rarely found here anymore and is considered extinct here.

It grows in swampy heath and shrubland as well as moist dry sclerophyll woodland and forest, on sandy to clay soils.

It is a listed threatened species in the wild. (This editor has personally sampled sites, in the Lake Macquarie area, supporting several thousand plants which can really only be detected when flowering).

In Tetratheca spp., leaves are simple and can be arranged alternately or in opposite pairs or whorls. Some species can exhibit varying leaf arrangements (dimorphic). In this species, the leaves are alternate but are reduced to small and narrow triangular scales, to 3 mm long and to 5 mm wide, an unusual feature in this genus.

Tetratheca spp. tend to produce solitary or paired flowers in leaf axils, well beyond the foliage. They typically have 4 petals which resemble an even cross (some flowers can have 5 petals), with 8 stamens and 1 carpel. Flowers often point downwards (pendent) which attracts certain insects. In this species, flowers are solitary to paired, white to pink to dark purple, to about 25 mm, occurring from July to December (chiefly spring).

Tetratheca spp. produce fruit as capsules which open longitudinally. In this species, capsules are obovate to 8 mm long; with seeds to 4 mm long, brown in colour and with fine hairs.