Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 12, 2018

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Swamp fox banksia

Banksia telmatiaea, the swamp fox banksia, is a shrub that grows in marshes and swamps along the lower west coast of Australia. It is an upright bush up to 2 m (7 ft) tall, with narrow leaves and a pale brown flower spike, which can produce profuse quantities of nectar. The leaves have a green upper surface and white hairy undersurface. First collected in the 1840s, it was not published as a separate species until 1981; as with several other similar species it was previously included in B. sphaerocarpa (fox banksia). The shrub grows amongst scrubland in seasonally wet lowland areas of the coastal sandplain between Badgingarra and Serpentine in Western Australia. Reports suggest that it is pollinated by a variety of birds and small mammals, but not much is known of the ecology or conservation biology of this little-studied species. Like many members of the series Abietinae, it has not been considered to have much horticultural potential and is rarely cultivated. (Full article...)

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