Hydrocotyle laxiflora commonly known as stinking pennywort, is a species of plant in the family Araliaceae. It has hairy, lobed leaves and cream coloured flowers and is endemic to Australia.
Description Hydrocotyle laxiflora is a spreading, perennial herb with white or yellow rhizomes, sometimes up to long, branches densely covered with coarse, rough hairs, branches upright or ascending to about high. Leaves are borne singly along the rhizome, circular, kidney or heart-shaped, slightly lobed, hairy and in diameter on a petiole long. Flowers are in simple umbels, roughly spherical, in diameter, mostly 30-50 flowered emitting an offensive odour. Flowering occurs from October to December and the fruit is a ribbed mericarp, long and wide.
Taxonomy and naming Hydrocotyle laxiflora was first formally described in 1830 by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle and the description was published in Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis.The specific epithet (laxiflora) means loose flower heads.
Distribution and habitat Stinking pennywort grows in shady, moist, loamy or humus rich soils in South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, Victoria and Tasmania.
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