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Synonyms: Melicytus dentatus (Volcanic Plain variant) APNI*
Melicytus dentatus (Snowfields variant) APNI*
Melicytus dentatus variant Volcanic Plain APNI*

Description: Erect to spreading or nearly procumbent shrubs, usually stiffly and divaricately branched, 0.3–2 m high, up to 4 m across, hemaphroditic. Bark smooth, grey, with lenticels. Branches tapered rather abruptly to thick spines; short shoots, when apparent, usually 3 -5 cm long, coarse and tapering abruptly to a coarsely pungent tip, usually leafless, with or without flowers.

Juvenile leaves usually resembling adults, mid- to dark-green. Adult leaves oblong to obovate, 9–22 mm long, 2–3 mm wide, solitary or in groups, variable in the same plants, margins entire, or rarely with shallow teeth.

Flowers honey-scented. Bracteoles rounded or deltoid. Sepals unequal. Corolla campanulate Petals thickish, ovate-oblong, 1-nerved, 2.7–3.5 mm long, pale cream or cream, usually mauve or purplish in distal half.

Fruit an ellipsoid to ovate-globose berry 7–8 mm long, initially green, maturing to uniformly or mottled bluish-grey to white; fleshy, sweet-tasting, white, purple-stained beneath spots. Pyrenes 1, or more commonly 2, 3–4 mm long, smooth.

Flowering: At lower altitudes, flowering occurs from early August to mid–September. In the alps and subalps, flowering usually occurs from October to December. Fruits usually mature between December and March.

Distribution and occurrence: Scattered from the southern Flinders Ranges south-east to the southern Victorian border, through south-western and north-eastern Victoria to the alps and subalps of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. Widespread throughTasmania, except the western coast and far north-east.

Occurs on a range of substrates, although chiefly on fertile soils derived from basalt, dolerite or limestone at lower altitudes,but on soils formed from a wider variety of parent material (granite, sandstone, metamorphics) in subalps and alps.
NSW subdivisions:
Other Australian states: Vic. S.A. Tas.

AVH map***

Widespread. The lowland populations in South Australia and Victoria are inadequately represented in conservation reserves. This is a very variable subspecies. In treeless areas in alpine and subalpine regions, forms may be procumbent or often rock-hugging. . Melicytus angustifolia subsp. angustifolia only occurs in northern Tasmania from a few sites in the Launceston and Ulverstone areas, along the lower Tamar, South Esk and Leven Rivers.