Australian Tropical Rainforest Plants - Online edition

Adenostemma macrophyllum (Blume) DC.


Herb (herbaceous or woody, under 1 m tall)
Shrub (woody or herbaceous, 1-6 m tall)
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Flowers and fruit. © CSIRO
Scale bar 10mm. © CSIRO
Cotyledon stage, epigeal germination. © CSIRO
10th leaf stage. © CSIRO
Family

Candolle, A.P. de (1836) Prodromus 5: 113.

Stem

Usually flowers and fruits as a herb but occasionally flowers as a shrub about 1 m tall.

Leaves

Leaf blades about 11.5-12 x 6.5-7 cm, petioles slender, about 2.5-3.5 cm long, shallowly grooved on the upper surface. Lateral veins about 3-4 on each side of the midrib. Petioles and stems clothed in short tortuous hairs.

Flowers

Inflorescence an open cyme of heads. Heads cup-shaped, clothed in glandular hairs. Flowers hermaphrodite. Calyx reduced to three paddle-shaped lobes. Corolla about 3 mm long, lobes less than 0.5 mm. Pollen white.

Fruit

Fruits borne in clusters. Individual fruits about 3.5 x 1 mm, tuberculate, calyx persistent at the base. Seeds about 3 mm long. Embryo with the cotyledons about the same size as the radicle.

Seedlings

Cotyledons orbicular, about 7-9 mm diam. Petioles slender, about 2-4 mm long. First pair of leaves ovate, leaf blades about 25-30 x 15-20 mm, both the upper and lower surface sparsely clothed in short white hairs. At the tenth leaf stage: leaf blade about 7.5-9 x 6-6.5 cm, triangular to broadly ovate, apex acuminate to apiculate, base very attenuate. Petiole about 1.5-2 cm long, grooved on the upper surface. Stems, petioles and lower leaf blade surface densely clothed in simple, erect, hooked hairs. Seed germination time 39 to 52 days.

Distribution and Ecology

Occurs in NEQ and possibly the northern part of CEQ, with a disjunction to south eastern Queensland. Altitudinal range from 150-1150 m. Grows in rain forest and wet sclerophyll forest in lowland and upland situations. Also found in Malesia.

Synonyms
Lavenia macrophylla Blume, Bijdragen tot de flora van Nederlandsch Indie : 905(1826), Type: Java?.
RFK Code
3095
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