Greek spyridion — a little basket, referring to the basket-like flower heads surrounded by leafy bracts.

Mostly small shrubs and subshrubs with scurfy, sometimes rust-coloured branchlets and lower leaf surfaces. Leaves alternate, mostly small; stipules brown and papery. Flowers stalkless, in small, dense, white-hairy heads surrounded by persistent brown bracts, occasionally solitary. Petals hooded, enclosing the anthers. Disk annular or of 5 glands. Fruit capsule with persistent sepals.

Grown for the greyish felty foliage and flower heads.

S. cinereum Wakef. from NSW and Vic is also occasionally available; it is a subshrub to 0.5 m tall that has hairy obcordate leaves with prominently notched tips.

30 species endemic to Australia.

Cuttings.

Flowers stalkless, in heads with persistent brown bracts and whitish floral leaves; petals enclosing the stamens.

Source: Spencer, R. (2002). Rhamnaceae. In: Spencer, R.. 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.