Commemorating Gustav Kunze (1793–1851), Professor of Botany, Leipzig.
Shrubs or small trees. Leaves mostly alternate, sometimes opposite, aromatic when crushed. Flower clusters head-like, more or less terminal, occasionally the flowers stalked and solitary or 2-3 together; bracts sometimes enlarged. Flowers 5-parted, white, yellow, pink, red or purple. Calyx persistent on the fruit. Petals free, Stamens numerous, longer than the petals. Ovary with 2-3 chambers. Fruit usually a loculicidal capsule but indehiscent in a few species.
Grown for the flowers and foliage.
Less frequently grown species include the following: K. parvifolia Schauer, Violet Kunzea, from NSW and Vic, which has mostly linear leaves and pink or violet flowers; K. pauciflora Schauer, which has only 1-6 deep pink flowers in the head, pointed bracteoles at the base of the hairless calyx tube and a 5-chambered ovary; and K. preissiana Schauer from WA, which has pink, sometimes slightly violet flowers, a silky-hairy calyx tube and 5-chambered ovary.
About 36 species from Australia and New Zealand.
Seed or cuttings.
A few species are used as cut flowers.
Leaves mostly less than 5 mm wide; flowers mostly in heads; stamens free, longer than the petals; sepals persistent on the fruit; ovary 2-3-chambered, cf. Callistemon.
Töelken (1996).
Source: (2002). Myrtaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 3. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 2. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.
Prostrate with small obovate leaves and spreading reddish stems that root at the nodes. Flowers white in summer. Collected in the wild from Big Badja Hill near Cooma, NSW, and may be an undescribed species. Registered by ACRA in 1979.