Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Celastrus australis
Common name
Staff climber, Staff vine
Family
Celastraceae
Where found
Forest. Coast, ranges, and the eastern part of the tablelands.
Notes
Twining or scrambling shrub. Seeds with a fleshy aril. Branches mostly grey to grey-brown, more or less hairless, with numerous pale lenticels. Young branchlets hairless to hairy, with broad scales to 3 mm long near the bases of the branchlets. The margins of the scales appear to have been chewed. Leaves alternating up the stems, 3–10 cm long, 10–50 mm wide, margins entire or toothed, tips pointed. Male and female flowers on different plants. Flowers 3-5 mm in diameter, with 5 yellowish green to cream petals 1.5–3 mm long, in branched clusters. Female flowers sometimes have stamens that do not produce pollen, smaller than the stamens in male flowers. Flowers most of the year. Seed cases yellow drying light brown, the inner surface with scattered red spots, 2–6.5 mm long. Seeds with an orange to orange red aril completely surrounding the seed.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Celastrus~australis
(accessed 7 January, 2021)
This identification key and fact sheets are available as a free mobile application:
