Common fringe myrtle

Calytrix tetragona is a small, much-branched evergreen shrub of the Myrtaceae family, typically 0.5 to 2 metres tall, with slender, wiry stems clothed in tiny, sessile, heath-like leaves. The leaves are alternate or clustered, narrowly linear to needle-like, 3 to 8 millimetres long and less than 1 millimetre wide, often with three longitudinal angles or grooves, dark green and aromatic when crushed. In spring and early summer the shrub bears profuse, solitary, star-shaped flowers in the upper leaf axils, each 1 to 2 centimetres across, with five sharply pointed petals that vary from white through pink to deep magenta and a long-persistent calyx whose lobes terminate in slender, awn-like, ribbon-like appendages that turn russet-red as the flower ages, creating a second decorative display. Numerous slender stamens project from the centre of each flower. Native to southern Australia, including Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales and Queensland, it grows in heathland, mallee woodland and dry sclerophyll forest on sandy or gravelly soils.