Pink Mulla Mulla
Flower & Bud
Murray Mallee Region
Pink Mulla Mulla
Flower with old Fruit
 
                      
Pink Mulla Mulla (Ptilotus exaltatus)Class: Plants (Plantae) - Land Plants (Charophyta) - Land Plants (Equisetopsida)
Order: Betalains (Caryophyllales)
Family: Amaranth (Amaranthaceae)     iNaturalist Observation
Species: Pink Mulla Mulla (Ptilotus exaltatus)
This Photo:     🔍Flower Close Up🔎

Thank you Darren Schmitke & Dr Timothy Hammer for identifying and Dr Miguel de Salas for helping with the id of this species for us

General Species Information:
Found in the Murray Mallee SA, Riverland and possibly elsewhere
Darren invited us to a local reserve to show us some stunning species exploding after a fire 2.5 years ago. When we found this Darren told us it was Mulla Mulla.
However trying to nail down the binomial name presented a challenge.
It turns out the taxonomy of Ptilotus has been a bit of a mess. Some on-line systems still haven't caught up. At one point this was P. exaltatus var exaltatus, then was moved to Ptilotus nobilis ssp nobilis, but then the other sub-species of P. nobilis were moved elsewhere and this defaulted to P. nobilis.
Miguel highlighted this to us on iNaturalist.
Then Timothy wrote a paper clarifying it's taxonomic position back to P. exaltatus.
Well at least the common name didn't change
LOL

Copyright © 2020-2024 Brett & Marie Smith. All Rights Reserved. Photographed 05-Sep-2020
This species is classed as RA (Rare) in the Murray Mallee, SA, by DENR (Regional Species Status Assessments, July 2010)