Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Muehlenbeckia adpressa
Common name
Climbing lignum
Family
Polygonaceae
Where found
Rainforest and rainforest margins, dunes, behind beaches, cliff tops, and along streams, and around swamps. Coastal, mainly south of Wallaga Lake near Bergamui.
Notes
Prostrate or twining low shrub with slender stems to about 2 m long or more (rarely a tangled, more or less erect shrub to about 0.6 m high). Flowers and fruit more or less fleshy. Stems winged to longitudinally striate, hairless, often reddish. Leaves alternating up the stems, 1.5–7 cm long, 15–70 mm wide, often thick textured, hairless, often shining, tips blunt to rounded, bases cordate (occasionally squared off), margins usually finely frilly. Male and female flowers on different plants. Flowers white to yellow-green or reddish, with 5 'petals', each 2–3.5 mm long, free from each other almost to the base, female flowers elongating to 5 mm in fruit. Flower spikes 1–10 cm long. Flowers mostly Sep.–Jan. Nuts elliptical to oval, with 3 longitudinal ridges, sides more or less flat, sometimes concave, 2.7–3.0 mm long, smooth, brown to black.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Muehlenbeckia~adpressa (accessed 24 January, 2021)
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