Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Cinnamomum oliveri

Fruit and leaves. Australian Plant Image Index, Australian Tropical Rainforest key

Young leaves. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, Adelaide Botanic Gardens, SA

Common name

Oliver's sassafras, Camphorwood

Family

Lauraceae

Where found

Rainforest. North from the Illawarra region.

Notes

Tree to 30 m high. Fruit fleshy. Trunk sometimes flanged or buttressed. Bark grey or brown, corky, with horizontal lines and blisters. Stems hairless. Aromatic with a strong sarsaparilla smell in all parts if rubbed. Leaves opposite or almost opposite each other, sometimes alternating up the stems, usually 8–15 cm long, 20–40 mm wide, leathery to rather stiff, upper surface green and glossy, lower surface paler and somewhat glaucous, margins entire and wavy. Flowers white, with 6 'petals', 8-10 mm in diameter, hairy. Flowers in branched clusters about as long as or longer than the leaves. Fruit black or bluish black, oval, 12-18 mm long, aromatic when cut. Fruits often galled and irregular in shape, coated with a yellowish to whitish powdery fungal layer, 20–50 mm in diameter.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Cinnamomum~oliveri (accessed 7 January, 2021)