Conospermum patens, commonly known as the slender smokebush,[1] is a species of flowering plant of the family Proteaceae and is endemic to south-eastern continental Australia. It is an erect shrub with crowded linear or spatula-shaped leaves, panicles of densely hairy white, bluish-grey or purplish flowers and hairy, yellowish-brown nuts.
Conospermum patens is an erect shrub that typically grows to a height of up to about and has its branches covered with soft, white hairs. Its leaves are crowded, widely spreading, linear or spatula-shaped, long and wide. The flowers are arranged in panicles mostly wide, on the ends of branches or in upper leaf axils, on a peduncle long. There are egg-shaped bracteoles long and wide. The perianth is white, bluish-grey or purplish, forming a tube long. The upper lip is egg-shaped, long and wide, the lower lip joined for with oblong lobes long and wide. Flowering mostly occurs from September to December, and the fruit is a hairy, yellowish-brown nut long and wide.[2]
Conospermum patens was first formally described in 1847 by Diederich von Schlechtendal in the journal Linnaea: Ein Journal für die Botanik in ihrem ganzen Umfange, oder Beiträge zur Pflanzenkunde, from a specimen collected in a pine forest near Gawler by Hans Hermann Behr.[3] [4] The specific epithet (patens) means 'spreading'.[5]
Slender smokebush grows in the west of Victoria in the Grampians, Little and Big Deserts and near Casterton, and on the southern Eyre Peninsula and lower south-east of South Australia, where it grows in heath, heathy woodland and shrubland.[6]