Adenanthos ileticos

Adenanthos ileticos
Conservation status
Priority Four — Rare Taxa (DEC)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Eudicots
Order:	Proteales
Family:	Proteaceae
Genus:	Adenanthos
Species:	A. ileticos
Binomial name
Adenanthos ileticos E.C.Nelson

Adenanthos ileticos is a species of shrub in the family Proteaceae. It has roughly triangular, lobed leaves, and pale pink-red and cream, inconspicuous flowers. A rare species, it is known only from a single location in the south-west of Western Australia. It was discovered in 1968, and immediately brought into cultivation, but it would not be formally published and named until a decade later.

Adenanthos ileticos grows as an erect, spreading lignotuberous shrub, usually up to 2 m (7 ft) high, but occasionally to 3 m (10 ft). It has roughly triangular leaves, up to 10 mm long and around 5 mm wide, with three lobes across the top. The flowers, which appear between August and November, are pale pink-red and cream, with a style which is about 32 mm long.

It is somewhat similar in appearance to A. cuneatus and A. forrestii, but the former has much larger leaves, and the other much deeper lobes, than A. ileticos.

This species was first collected by John Wrigley of the Australian National Botanic Gardens in 1968. Wrigley took cuttings and the plant was established in cultivation at the gardens. Later, Ernest Charles Nelson worked with Wrigley while developing a comprehensive taxonomic revision of Adenanthos. He recognised the cultivated plants as an undescribed species, and in 1973 revisited Wrigley's collection location to collect further native specimens. When he eventually published his revision in 1978, he gave this species the specific epithet ileticos from the Greek word for wriggle, as a pun on Wrigley. Wrigley states "his Irish sense of humour showed through when assigning the... name".

Nelson followed George Bentham in dividing Adenanthos into two sections, placing A. ileticos into A. sect. Adenanthos because its perianth tube is fairly straight, and not swollen above the middle. He further divided the section into two subsections, with A. ileticos placed into A. subsect. Adenanthos for reasons including the length of its perianth. However Nelson discarded his own subsections in his 1995 treatment of Adenanthos for the Flora of Australia series of monographs.