Australian Tropical Rainforest Plants - Online edition
Cyrtandra baileyi F.Muell.
Mueller, F.J.H. von in Bailey, F.M. (1890) A Synopsis of the Queensland Flora, Supplement 3 : 51. Type: Queensland.Russell River, Bellenden-Ker Expedition, Bellenden-Ker Ra., W. Sayer; syn: MEL & BRI?.
Bailey's Cyrtandra; Cyrtandra, Bailey's
Usually flowers and fruits as a shrub 2-3 m tall.
Leaf blades about 8.5-20 x 2.5-5.5 cm. One leaf of each pair is much reduced (total length about 1 cm long) and can be mistaken for a stipule. Teeth more pronounced on the upper half of the leaf blade. Very young twigs and terminal buds clothed in orange-brown hairs. Petiole grooved on the upper surface.
Flowers often produced in the axil of the reduced leaf of each pair so that the flower appears to be leaf-opposed. Calyx about 6-7 mm long, irregularly 5-lobed. Corolla about 25 mm long. Anthers two, fused together in the flower bud forming an arch over the stigma. Pollen white. Ovary green, seated on a disk.
Cotyledons +/- sessile, about 1.5-2 x 1-2 mm. At the tenth leaf stage: seedling glabrous, leaf blade elliptic, thick and fleshy, +/- paired and opposite but one leaf of each pair much is reduced and scarcely recognizable as a leaf, being about the dimensions of a large cataphyll. Young shoots clothed in rusty red hairs. Seed germination time 105 to 339 days.
Endemic to NEQ, restricted to the wetter rain forests from the McDowall Range to the southern edge of the Atherton Tableland. Altitudinal range from 100-1200 m. Grows as an understory plant in well developed lowland, upland and mountain rain forests.