Rabbit-tails
Variation 4
Rabbit-tails
Variation 6
Animals
Plants
Info
| Rabbit-tails Variation 4 | | Rabbit-tails Variation 6 | | ||
Animals Plants Info |
 | Class: | Plants (Plantae) - Land Plants (Charophyta) - Land Plants (Equisetopsida) | ||||||||||||
| Order: | Betalains (Caryophyllales) | |||||||||||||
| Family: | Amaranth (Amaranthaceae) iNaturalist Observation | |||||||||||||
| Species: | Rabbit-tails (Ptilotus seminudus)| This Photo: | 🔍Variation 5🔎 | Thank you Dr Timothy Hammer for confirming the id of this species for us General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere Very variable in colour; from bright green to deep red. Main difference with Pussy Tails is the leaf shape. In 2026 we've just added 7 variants of this plant to try and highlight the variability of their leaf shapes. We've labelled them Variation 1, 2, 3, etc. It takes on a whole different appearance based on age, colour, dryness, etc. These new photos are taken within about 100m ish of each other. Same location. But look how different they appear. What we have to do is pull away from focussing on colour and focus on, in this case, leaf shape. The leaf shape of P. seminudus & P. spathulatus are VERY similar at the extremes of their leaf shape variability. So much so that the shape of one leaf doesn't always tell the story. There will be cases where the plant has too few leaves that you can't separate it out into species unless you follow that one plant over time as it grows. In lay terms, P. spathulatus leaves are generally parallel sided at the beginning, then pop out quickly into a spoon shaped end. P. seminudus leaves tend to be non-parallel at the start and blend into a wide end more gradually. In many cases P. semidudus are just down right fat at the base, and just get fatter towards the end; they also tend to be more concave, not as flat. The burgandy example attached is very typical and easy to identify as this species. The rest are blending more towards spathulatus, with the last one being a really tough call (it's possible it is P. spathulatus).
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