Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Stenocarpus sinuatus

Flowers and leaves. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, suburban garden, Melbourne, Vic

Open seed case with seeds. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, Royal Botanic Gardens Mt Annan, near Campbelltown.

Tree. Australian Plant Image Index, photographer Murray Fagg, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, Vic

Common name

Firewheel tree, Fire tree

Family

Proteaceae

Where found

Planted, occasionally naturalised. Coast and ranges north of Wollongong. Rarely elsewhere.

Naturally occurs in rainforest in northern NSW and north from there.

Notes

Introduced tree to 40 m high. Older trunks flanged at the base. Bark grey to brown, more or less wrinkled, with short longitudinal fissures, sometimes corky. Young branchlets reddish, hairy, soon hairless. Leaves alternating up the stems, 10–25 cm  long, 20–60 mm wide, leathery, margins entire or irregularly lobed, surfaces green and shiny above, dull or shiny below, tips mostly blunt. 1 longitudinal vein present. Flowers red, 25-40 mm long, tubular in bud, the tube slightly slit on the lower side while in bud, with 4 'petals' free from each other when the flowers are fully open. Flowers in 6–20-flowered wheel-like clusters. Flowers autumn to winter. Seeds with a membranous outer wing folded round the inner wing.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Stenocarpus~sinuatus (accessed 11 April 2021)