Flowers in cylindrical spikes, at first terminal but axis soon growing out into leafy shoot; hypanthium ovoid, campanulate or urceolate
Sepals 5
Petals 5, usually red
Stamens many, much longer than petals, in 2 or more series, rarely united in short ring at base, brightly coloured
Ovary 3- or 4-locular; ovules many per locule; style simple; stigma usually inconspicuous
Fruit a woody capsule, usually remaining on stem for several years
Seeds very small, many
x = 11 (polyploidy)
Nomenclature:
*Callistemon R.Br.
Brown: 547 (1814)
Stanley & Ross: 133 (1986)
Mitchem: 29 (1993) user-friendly key to commonly cultivated and naturalised species
Distribution & Notes:
Global: Species 20 or more, endemic in Australia
Southern Africa: Species 2: *Callistemon rigidus R.Br. and *C. speciosus (Sims) DC., naturalised in Eastern Cape
References:
BROWN, R. 1814. Appendix 3: General remarks, geographical and systematical, on the botany of Terra Australis. In M. Flinders, A voyage to Terra Australis 2. Nicol, London
MITCHEM, C.M. 1993. Callistemon, the beautiful bottlebrushes. Plantsman 15
STANLEY, T.D. & ROSS, E.M. 1986. Myrtaceae. Flora of south-eastern Queensland 2
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Welcome to Biodiversity Advisor 2.0!
Biodiversity Advisor, developed by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and its Data Partners, is a system that will provide integrated biodiversity information to a wide range of users who will have access to geospatial data, plant and animal species distribution data, ecosystem-level data, literature, images and metadata.
The integrated information comes from our much-loved Botanical Database of Southern Africa (BODATSA) also known as Plants of Southern Africa (POSA), Zoological Database of Southern Africa (ZODATSA), Biodiversity Geographic Information System (BGIS), SANBI's institutional repository (Opus) and others.
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