Leptospermum continentale

Leptospermum continentale, the prickly tea-tree, is an erect, often densely branched shrub in the family Myrtaceae, native to southeastern Australia, where it grows in heathlands, dry sclerophyll forests and on sandy or stony soils from coastal areas to the tablelands. It typically reaches 1 to 3 metres in height, with rough, fibrous, longitudinally peeling grey bark and slender, rigid, ascending branches. The small, alternate, sessile leaves are narrowly elliptic to lanceolate, 5 to 12 millimetres long, sharply pointed and stiff, giving the foliage its characteristically prickly feel. From late spring into summer the shrub produces solitary, axillary, white five-petalled flowers about 8 to 12 millimetres in diameter, with a shallow cup-shaped hypanthium and conspicuous central tuft of stamens. The fruit is a persistent, woody, hemispherical capsule about 5 millimetres across with five valves, opening to release fine seeds. Long confused with L. juniperinum, it was segregated as a distinct species in the 1980s and is widespread from southern Queensland through New South Wales and Victoria to Tasmania and South Australia.