Notes. Hibbertia glomerosa var. bistrata was erected by Wheeler (2002) for plants occurring in the vicinity of Mullewa and Morawa, east of Geraldton (Map 1) that have short curled hairs on their leaves and bracts and underlying the long pilose hairs on the sepals (compared with var. glomerosa, which has leaves and bracts glabrous apart from ciliolate margins, and sepals with pilose hairs only; Fig. 1).

Hibbertia bistrata occurs within the range of H. glomerosa, and the morphological separation between them, though regarded by Wheeler as slight, is highly consistent. Plants in all populations of H. bistrata are uniform in having moderately to densely curled-pubescent leaves, while all populations of H. glomerosa occurring nearby, and elsewhere in its very wide range, have consistently glabrous leaves. In the field we have not found mixed populations comprising both species, because there appears to be a habitat difference between them (with H. bistrata occurring on heavier soils than H. glomerosa), but some populations of the two species are <1 km apart. Given this close proximity, I regard that there has been and remains opportunities for populations of the two taxa to exchange genes, and the consistent morphological differences between them indicate that they do not do so.