Isopogon scabriusculus
Isopogon scabriusculus is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to southwestern Western Australia. It is a shrub with cylindrical, or narrow flat, sometimes forked leaves, and spherical to oval heads of pink or red flowers. Description. "Isopogon scabriusculus" is a shrub that typically grows to about high and wide, with reddish brown or greyish branchlets. The leaves are cylindrical, grooved or flat and narrow, up to long, sometimes forked with the undivided part up to long. The flowers are mostly arranged on the ends of branchlets, in sessile, spherical to oval heads  up to in diameter with overlapping, egg-shaped involucral bracts at the base. The flowers are red or pink, sometimes hairy and the fruit is a hairy nut about long, fused with others in a spherical head up to long in diameter. Taxonomy. "Isopogon scabriusculus" was first formally described in 1856 by Carl Meissner in de Candolle's "Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis". (Meissner had previously published the name "Isopogon scabriusculus" in 1852 but without a description.) In 1995, Donald Bruce Foreman described three subspecies of "I. scabriusculus" in "Flora of Australia" and the names are accepted at the Australian  Plant Census. The specific epithet ("scabriusculus") means "minutely scabrous", "pubiflorus" means "softly hairy-flowered" and "stenophyllus" means "narrow-leaved". Distribution and habitat. "Isopogon scabriusculus" is widespread in the south-west of Western Australia where it grows on sandplains and ridges. Subspecies "pubifloris" grows in scrub, shrubland and woodland between Hyden, Southern Cross, Coolgardie, Lake King and the Frank Hann National Park. Subspecies "scabriusculus" grows in mallee, scrub and heath between Mullewa and Newdegate and subspecies "stenophyllus" grows in heath and shrubland, mainly between Wubin, Southern Cross and Newdegate. Conservation status. All three subspecies of "I. scabriusculus" are classified as "not  threatened" by the Western Australian Government Department of Parks and Wildlife.