Bertya lapicola is a species of flowering plant in the family Euphorbiaceae and is endemic to Queensland. It is a monoecious shrub with many branches, linear leaves, flowers borne singly in leaf axils or on the ends of branches, and narrowly oval or pear-shaped capsules with a light to dark brown seed.
Description Bertya lapicola is a monoecious shrub that typically grows to a height of up to and has many branches with a thin, sticky film on most parts. Its leaves are linear, long and wide on a petiole long. The upper surface of the leaves is glabrous, green and smooth, and the lower surface is white and densely covered with star-shaped hairs. The flowers are usually borne singly in leaf axils or on the end of a short side branches on a peduncle long. There are two to five linear or strap-like bracts long and wide. Male flowers are sessile or on a pedicel up to long with five light green elliptic or oblong sepal lobes long and wide and 55 to 72 stamens. Female flowers are on pedicels long, the five sepal lobes light green, linear, long and wide. Female flowers have no petals, the ovary is glabrous, and the style is long with three ascending red limbs long, each with two or three lobes long. Flowering mainly occurs from June to September, and the fruit is a narrowly oval or pear-shaped capsule, long and wide with a single oblong or elliptic, light to dark brown seed long and wide with a creamy-white caruncle.
Taxonomy Bertya lapicola was first formally described in 2002 by David Halford and Rodney John Francis Henderson in the journal Austrobaileya from specimens collected along Goldmine Road north of Helidon in 1992. The specific epithet (lapicola) means 'stone-dweller', referring to the rocky sandstone habitat of this species.
In the same edition of Austrobaileya, Halford and Henderson described two subspecies of H. lapicola, and the names are accepted by the Australian Plant Census: Bertya lapicola subsp. brevifolia Halford & R.J.F.Hend. has leaves long, the peduncles of male flowers stout and long. Bertya lapicola Halford & R.J.F.Hend. subsp. lapicola has leaves long, the peduncles of male flowers slender and long.
Distribution and habitat This species of Bertya confined to south-east Queensland, where the subspecies have disjunct distributions. Subspecies brevifolia grows in open forest or woodland on shallow sandy soil on sandstone outcrops in the Carnarvon and Expedition Ranges in central Queensland, but subsp. lapicola grows in open forest communities and is confined to sandstone hills north of Helidon in south-east Queensland.
Conservation status Both subspecies of B. lapicola are listed as of "least concern" under the Queensland Government Nature Conservation Act 1992.
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