Taxonomy
The earliest known botanical specimens of A. terminalis were collected by Scottish botanist Robert Brown at Port Lincoln, South Australia in the first few days of March 1802. He described and named the species in his 1810 "On the Proteaceae of Jussieu". An explicit etymology for the specific name terminalis was not given, but it is accepted that it is from the Latin terminus ("end"), and refers to the fact that flowers occur at the ends of branches.
In 1856, Carl Meissner published a putative variety, A. terminalis var. plumosa, and also assigned some Western Australia specimens collected by Ludwig Preiss to A. terminalis. Fourteen years later, George Bentham published a revision of the genus in Volume 5 of his landmark Flora Australiensis. He overlooked Meissner's var. plumosa, and suggested, correctly, that Meissner had erred in assigning Preiss's Western Australian specimens to A. terminalis. He also published the first infrageneric arrangement of the genus, dividing it into two sections, with A. terminalis placed in A. sect. Stenolaema because its perianth tube is straight and not swollen above the middle. This arrangement still stands today, though A. sect. Stenolaema is now renamed to the autonym A. sect. Adenanthos.
In 1978 Ernest Charles Nelson refined Bentham's arrangement by dividing A. sect. Adenanthos into two subsections, with A. terminalis placed into A. subsect. Adenanthos for reasons including the length of its perianth. At the same time he discarded A. terminalis var. plumosa on the grounds that the species is quite variable, particularly when it comes to the hairy covering of the leaves, this being the main characteristic on which Meissner had distinguished the variety. A. sect. Adenanthos was not to last long: Nelson discarded his own subsections in his 1995 treatment of Adenanthos for the Flora of Australia series of monographs.
The placement of A. cuneatus in Nelson's arrangement of Adenanthos may be summarised as follows:
- Adenanthos
- A. sect. Eurylaema (4 species)
- A. sect. Adenanthos
- A. drummondii
- A. dobagii
- A. apiculatus
- A. linearis
- A. pungens (2 subspecies)
- A. gracilipes
- A. venosus
- A. dobsonii
- A. glabrescens (2 subspecies)
- A. ellipticus
- A. cuneatus
- A. stictus
- A. ileticos
- A. forrestii
- A. eyrei
- A. cacomorphus
- A. flavidiflorus
- A. argyreus
- A. macropodianus
- A. terminalis
- A. sericeus (2 subspecies)
- A. × cunninghamii
- A. oreophilus
- A. cygnorum (2 subspecies)
- A. meisneri
- A. velutinus
- A. filifolius
- A. labillardierei
- A. acanthophyllus
Despite the phyletic order of the above, Nelson thought the closest relatives of A. terminalis were probably A. apiculatus and A. dobagii.
Suspected hybrids of A. terminalis with A. macropodianus have been found.
Read more about this topic: Adenanthos Terminalis