Photo: Geoff Derrin, CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)

Golden Cone-myrtle

Conothamnus aureus

Also known as Golden Conothamnus, Trichobasis aurea (historic name)

At a glance

Family

Myrtaceae (the myrtle family)

Type

Small evergreen shrub

Parts used

None traditionally documented, botanically the flowers and foliage are the plant's distinguishing features

Size

30 to 50 cm tall, 50 to 100 cm wide, spindly and straggling in habit

Bloom

August through November, golden yellow flower heads

Habitat

Sandy and loamy plains, flats, and coastal dunes from the Stirling Range east to Israelite Bay, in the Great Southern and Goldfields-Esperance regions of Western Australia

Acquisition

Forage

This plant in HerbSense

Traditional uses

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Conothamnus aureus is one of those quiet corners of the botanical world that has never made it into the kitchen garden or the medicine chest. It grows wild and largely unbothered along the sandplains of Western Australia's south coast, its golden flower heads opening for a few months each spring without much notice from anyone but the bees and the botanists. No documented tradition of medicinal, culinary, or ceremonial use has survived for this species, and honest herbal reference resists inventing one. Its story, for now, is simply the story of a small, tenacious plant holding its ground in some of the harshest, sandiest soil on the continent.

How to grow & use it

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Traditional remedies and step-by-step preparations, a complete growing guide, and how to harvest, dry, and store it, all unlocked with HerbLens Unlimited.

✦Remedies & preparations
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Choose it when

“For the small, gold-headed wildflower that keeps its secrets, holding fast in the sandplains where little else chooses to grow.”

Did you know?

The genus name Conothamnus comes from the Greek konos, meaning cone, and thamnos, meaning shrub, a nod to the tight, cone-like flower heads. This particular species was first described in 1852 by the Russian botanist Nikolai Turczaninow, who called it Trichobasis aurea, before the Czech botanist Karel Domin moved it into Conothamnus in 1923. Its golden flower heads are also unusual among its two close relatives because they lack petals entirely, the color and shape coming instead from a cluster of golden stamens.

Safety

This plant has no documented use as food or medicine, so treat it as an unstudied wild native rather than something to eat or apply to the skin. Many Western Australian native plants are protected in the wild, so foraging may require a permit.