Poranthera microphylla, commonly known as small poranthera, is a flowering plant in the family Phyllanthaceae. It is a small, widespread Australian herb with blue-grey leaves and white flowers.
Description Poranthera microphylla is a decumbent or more or less upright, slender, densely branched, annual herb up to high. It has soft, smooth branches, egg to spoon-shaped blue-grey leaves, thin, usually long, wide, margins more or less flat or slightly recurved, petiole long, apex blunt or rounded and mostly with a short, triangular point. The flowers are in a corymb about across, petals white or pink, bracts narrowly egg-shaped, up to about long and on a pedicels to . Flowering occurs mostly from September to April and the fruit is a 3-lobed capsule in diameter, white and warty.
Taxonomy and naming Poranthera microphylla was first formally described in 1833 by Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart and the description was published in Annales des Sciences Naturelles. The specific epithet (microphylla) means "small leaved".
Distribution and habitat Small poranthera is a widespread species and grows in dry, montane forest, woodland and grassland in New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory. It is also native to New Zealand where it is very uncommon in the top of the South Island.
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