Silke it is pretty hard to tell the invasive decurrens subspecies from that of physocarpa subspecies. This looks like Hakea decurrens subs'. physocarpa. The Flora of NSW identifies the two sub-species by the width of the pod and the width of pale wood when the pod is split in half. decurrens has a 14-19 wide pod and a pale wood zone in the pod of 3-6mm, while physocarpa has a 15-35mm wide pod and pale wood zone of 6-12mm. I leave it to you to confirm
Hi Michael, I had a look at some pods today. It's not entirely clear cut but but on average I'll go with the physocarpa subsp. The size of the pods is at the low end of physocarpa.
Sorry. I reversed the ID before reading the comments. Though three years down the track, with no other sightings of this subspecies, it might be an idea to find an open pod and redo the measurements. The place to do it is beside the seed cavity.
Given there are large numbers of the local subsp decurrens further north I indeed wonder whether this is physocarpa. Silke, would you be able to collect the fruits of this specimen? They will open after a couple of days and then you can carry out measurements as suggested by Betty.
I cannot remember why I thought it was subsp. physocarpa at the time. Presumably on the diameter of the nuts (follicles according to botanists). Having looked at the pale wood zone of the nuts (usually 6-12 mm wide in physocarpa, usually 3.5-6 mm wide in decurrens) and the outer layer (usually 2.5-5 mm wide in physocarpa, usually 1-2.5 mm wide in subsp. decurrens), and the fact that is extremely unlikely for the coastal subsp, physocarpa to have been planted in the ACT, I have decided it must be subsp. decurrens, the conmon subspecies in the ACT.
Everyone. The reason both suggested names are subsp. decurrens now and the dates the same is that I merged subsp. physocarpa into subsp. decurrens over the weekend, not realising that the background maintenance was down. Everything went pear shaped. Rohan has said he will try to fix it.
Yes, these kind of things happen when working with huge mega data stuff. We all understand and are very grateful to the CNM background scewing team who work hard to get things running as amazingly smooth as possible.
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