Persoonia volcanica facts for kids

Persoonia volcanica is a special kind of flowering plant. It belongs to the Proteaceae family, which includes many unique Australian plants. This plant is only found in eastern Australia, meaning it's endemic to that area. It's an upright shrub that can grow quite tall. Its young branches are a bit hairy. The leaves are shaped like eggs or are long and narrow. This plant has pretty yellow flowers that grow in groups. These flower groups can be up to 180 millimeters long. What's cool is that the part where the flowers grow, called a rachis, often keeps growing even after the flowers bloom! Each flower usually has a leaf right at its base.

What Does the Volcanic Geebung Look Like?

The Persoonia volcanica is an upright shrub. It usually grows to be about 1.8 to 6 meters tall. That's like one to three times the height of a tall adult! It has smooth bark on its trunk and branches. When the young branches first grow, they are covered with grayish or rust-colored hairs.

The leaves of this plant can be shaped like an egg, or they can be more oval or long and narrow. They are usually between 20 and 90 millimeters long. That's about the length of your thumb to your whole hand. The leaves are also about 3 to 10 millimeters wide.

The flowers are bright yellow. They grow in groups of up to twenty flowers along a long stem called a rachis. This rachis can be up to 180 millimeters long. An interesting fact is that this stem often keeps growing even after the flowers have bloomed! Each flower sits on a small stalk called a pedicel, which is about 1.5 to 10 millimeters long. Usually, there's a leaf right at the base of each flower. The flower parts, called tepals, are yellow and about 9 to 13 millimeters long.

This plant mostly flowers from December to February. After flowering, it produces a green fruit. This fruit is a type of drupe, which means it has a fleshy outer part and a hard pit or "stone" inside, like a peach or a cherry.

How Did the Volcanic Geebung Get Its Name?

Scientists officially described Persoonia volcanica for the first time in 1991. The description was made by two botanists, Peter H. Weston and Lawrie Johnson. They studied a plant sample that was collected near a place called Woodenbong in 1989. Their findings were published in a science journal called Telopea.

The second part of the plant's name, volcanica, gives us a clue about where it grows. This name was chosen because the plant usually grows on soil that comes from volcanoes.

Where Does the Volcanic Geebung Grow?

This special geebung plant grows in forests. You can also find it at the edges of rainforests. It lives in the McPherson Range, which is a mountain range on the border between New South Wales and Queensland in Australia.

It also grows in another area much further north. This second area is called Kroombit Tops National Park. When a plant or animal lives in two separate areas that are far apart, it's called a disjunct distribution.