Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Polyscias elegans
Common name
celery wood, silver basswood, black pencil cedar
Family
Araliaceae
Where found
Forest, swales of coastal dune systems, and along streams. Coastal north of Batemans Bay.
Notes
Tree to 30 m high. Fruit fleshy. Smooth-barked on young trees but fissured, scaly, and rough-barked on larger trees. Stems with prominent lenticels, stellate hairy (needs a hand lens or a macro app on your phone/tablet to see), becoming hairless. Leaves aromatic when rubbed, smelling of celery, alternating up the stems, compound, 30-150 cm long, bipinnate with an unstated number of pinnae, each to 12 cm long, and about 13-55 leaflets in all. Some leaves on flowering shoots with only the main rachis and with 5–9 leaflets. Leaflets about 3.5–14 cm long, about 20–65 mm wide, with branched hairs when young, tips pointed, margins entire. Flowers bisexual, or with male and female flowers on the same plant. Flowers purple to black, with 5 petals each 2-3 mm long, turned back when the flower is open. Flowers in large branched clusters. Flowering: April–August. Fruit dark purple to purple-black when ripe, about 5 mm long.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Polyscias~elegans (accessed 2 February, 2021)
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