Beach Fan Flower.

Prostrate shrub with flowering stems to 40 cm high, with appressed hairs. Leaves oblanceolate to obovate, tapering basally, entire; lamina to 80 mm long, to 27 mm wide; axillary hairs white. Flowers in terminal spikes to 8 cm long; lowest bracts mostly oblong-oblanceolate, 5–40 mm long, half length of flower; bracteoles linear to narrowly elliptic, 3–6 mm long. Sepals united in a tube, sinuate, ciliate, 0.5–1 mm long. Corolla 12–18 mm long, pubescent outside, bearded inside, bright blue; barbulae numerous, broad, often papillate apically; wings 1–2 mm wide. Ovary 2-locular; indusium 2 mm wide, with few hairs basally. Fruit globular, to 12 mm diam., glabrous, white and purplish.

Flowers most of the year.

Native.

Occurs along the coast of S.A., Qld, N.S.W. and Vic., from Encounter Bay, S.A., to Mackay, Qld.

Grows on sand dunes near the coast, where it acts as a stabiliser.

Qld: Fraser Is., S.T. Blake 14383 (BRI); 10 km S of Tangalooma, Moreton Is., P. Sharpe & L. Durrington 1159 (BRI).

N.S.W.: Corindi Beach, 30 Apr. 1956, E.F. Constable (NSW); One Mile Beach, Anna Bay, K. McDonald 5128 (NSW).

Vic.: Portland to Bridgewater Lakes, A.C. Beauglehole 43281 (MEL).

This species differs from all other Australian members of the series in the thick, fleshy mesocarp with purplish white epicarp, and tuberculate endocarp. Scaevola sericea, which occurs in similar habitats, has flowers with white to cream corollas in axillary cymes, and whitish, fleshy fruit. Variable in indumentum and in the barbulae which may or may not possess papillate heads. Closely related to Scaevola gracilis from N.Z. and S. porrecta from Tonga, both of which occur in similar coastal situations.

P.B. Kennedy, loc. cit. in H.C. Andrews, Bot. Repos. 1: t. 22 (1798); E.R. Rotherham et al., Flowers and Plants of New South Wales and Southern Queensland: fig. 12 (1975); K.A.W. Williams, Native Plants of Queensland 3rd edn, 1: 256–257 (1984); R. Carolin & P. Clarke, Beach Plants of South Eastern Australia: 65 (1991).

Carolin, R. & Clarke, P. (1991). Beach Plants of South Eastern Australia. (Sainty & Associates: Potts Point).

Data derived from Flora of Australia Volume 35 (1992), a product of ABRS, ©Commonwealth of Australia