Lissanthe rubicunda is a species of flowering plant in the family Ericaceae and is endemic to the south of Western Australia. It is a slender, erect to spreading shrub with few branches and sharply-pointed linear leaves and short spikes or racemes of red, tube-shaped flowers.
Lissanthe rubicunda is a slender, erect to spreading shrub with few branches that typically grows to a height of up to . Its leaves are sharply-pointed, and mostly about long and furrowed on the lower surface. The flowers are borne in short spikes or racemes on the ends of the branches, each flower on a pedicel about long with smaller bracts and bracteoles at the base. The sepals are broadly egg-shaped and about long and the petal are red, joined at the base, forming a tube about long with lobes more than long and bearded near the ends.[1]
This species was first formally described in 1864 by Ferdinand von Mueller who gave it the name Cyathodes rubicunda in his Fragmenta phytographiae Australiae from specimens collected by George Maxwell.[2] [3] In 1867, Mueller transferred the species to Styphelia as S. rubicunda in a later edition of the Fragmenta.[4] [5] In 2005, Jocelyn Marie Powell, Crayn and Elizabeth Brown transferred the species to Lissanthe as L. rubicunda in Australian Systematic Botany.[6] The specific epithet (rubicunda) means "red" or "ruddy".[7]
Lissanthe rubicunda grows in sandy and clay soils, spongolite, limestone and laterite on planis, slopes, watercourses, swamp edges and winter-wet places in the Coolgardie, Esperance Plains and Mallee bioregions of southern Western Australia.