Tiny Tuesday - Twiggy Bearded-heath

You know how it goes, you are wandering down a bush path, and you see these little white flowers and you think, OK, that will do for Tiny Tuesday.  At best they are only 3mm - 4mm from petal to petal.  And to the naked eye, they just look like your common or garden 5-petalled white flowers.  Nothing remarkable.

But when you see them on the screen, their true beauty just pops out at you.  Just look how delicate those flowers are.

They are fringed so that they look like they've been dunked very briefly in spun sugar.  You can tell how tiny they are by the out-of-focus wire fence which is just in the picture (thinking of Hobbs - he loves his wire fences)

This is very true for many of our bush flowers - some are gaudy and in-your-face saying look at me, look at me.

But ever so many more are tiny jewels just waiting to be discovered.  And I'm so glad I discovered this one.

Big Announcement:  I've signed on for a couple of U3A on-line courses.  Botany, and....... ta-da........ Australian Flora.  It's been a long while since I last studied, but I'm looking forward to it.

Almost forgot - it's a twiggy bearded-heath, the most common of the bearded-heaths.  (Leocopogin virgatus).  I haven't a clue what the rest of it means, but I promise I will find out in the due course of events.

Description: Slender shrub, 35–45 cm high; branchlets pubescent.
Leaves ovate, 3–22 mm long, 0.9–3.3 mm wide; margins entire or sparsely toothed; lamina glabrous, concolorous, upper surface concave, lower surface with 3 central ± parallel veins; petiole to 1 mm long.
Flowers erect, 4–7 together in 5–10 mm long spikes, white; bracteoles 1–2 mm long. Sepals 1.9–2.9 mm long. Corolla tube 1.6–2.2 mm long, villous inside near throat; lobes 2–2.5 mm long.
Fruit oblong, c. 2.3 mm long, ± angled, glabrous.