Wittsteinia
Shrubs, sometimes epiphytic. Leaves alternate, subopposite or in pseudowhorls, entire or toothed. Flowers in axillary, fascicle-like cymes, or solitary in axils; calyx persistent in fruit; corolla barrel-shaped to campanulate-urceolate, lobes entire or crenate to fimbriate; stamens free or more or less adnate to the base of the corolla; ovary inferior or semi-inferior, 2–3-locular; stigma capitate.
3 species, 1 endemic in Australia, the others in Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia.
Since the early 1900s Wittsteinia was regarded as an anomolous monotypic member of the Epacridaceae or Ericaceae but van Steenis (1984) provided convincing evidence for its inclusion in the Alseuosmiaceae. In the same work he included Periomphale in Wittsteinia, increasing the number of species of Wittsteinia to 3, thereby depriving Victoria of its only endemic vascular plant genus. Further genetic work now suggests that Alseuosmiaceae is only distantly related to Ericaceae, with the two families placed in different orders within superorder Asteranae.
Albrecht, D.E. (1996). Alseuosmiaceae. In: Walsh, N.G.; Entwisle, T.J., Flora of Victoria Vol. 3, Dicotyledons Winteraceae to Myrtaceae, pp. 541–542. Inkata Press, Melbourne.
Spinning