Common Name: Currant Bushes
Description: Shrubs, mostly glabrous with numerous slender, rigid branches, sometimes spinose; branchlets usually striate with decurrent ridges.
Leaves scale-like or well-developed, persistent or caducous.
Flowers minute, bisexual, solitary or in lateral spikes or racemes, sessile or shortly pedicellate in axil of ± minute bract. Tepals 5, rarely 4, apex sometimes slightly incurved or thickened. Stamens usually 5, inserted at base of tepals; filaments short. Disc mostly prominently lobed. Ovary inferior, 1-locular, 2–5-chambered at base; style very short; stigma mostly 5-lobed.
Drupe fleshy or dry, globose to ovoid, tepals persistent. Fruit of some species are used in preserves.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 17 spp., endemic Aust., Qld, N.S.W., Vic., Tas., S.A., W.A.
Text by B. Wiecek
Taxon concept:
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Branches rigid, terete, smooth or slightly striate, pungent | Leptomeria aphylla |
| Branches weak to semi-rigid, semi-terete, striate, not pungent | 2 |
| 2 | Inflorescences 10–16-flowered; flowers white; branches moderately striate | Leptomeria drupacea |
| Inflorescences 15–32-flowered; flowers green-brown (reddish when dry); branches strongly striate
Back to 1 | Leptomeria acida |
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