Meiogyne bidwillii (Benth.) D.C.Thomas, Chaowasku & R.M.K.Saunders

Xue, B., Thomas, D.C., Chaowasku, T., Johnson, D.M. & Saunders, R.M.K. (2014) Systematic Botany 39(2): 401.

Shrub or small tree to 5 m high. Young stems densely hairy with rusty simple spreading hairs, older stems becoming hairless, stems often flexuose or zigzagged.

Leaves alternate, simple, distichous (leaves held in one plane). Stipules absent. Petioles to 2-4 mm long. Leaf blade obovate, elliptic, oblong-elliptic or ovate, 4-13 cm long, 2.5-7 cm wide, base rounded or obtuse, margins entire, leaf apex acuminate or rounded. Upper leaf surface with ascending to erect hairs sparse to glabrescent on upper surface, often more concentrated along midrib and lateral veins, lower surface with longer hairs more densely distributed. Lateral veins about 6-11 pairs. Oil dots visible with a lens.

Inflorescences axillary, solitary. Flowers bisexual, 3-merous, flowers dark maroon to almost black. Sepals 3, triangular, 3-5-5.5 mm long, pubescent outside, free or connate at base only. Petals 6, in two whorls of 3, outer 3 sepaloid, 7.5-21 mm long, green, appressed hairy outside, glabrous inside and dotted with glands. Inner petals about 25-36 mm long, boat shaped, densely clothed in appressed hairs, inside and out, indigo. Stamens wedge-shaped, numerous, 50-90, filaments short to absent, connective between pollen sacs of anthers broad and truncate at apex; carpels 5-10, free (gynoecium apocarpous) and clothed in simple hairs. Stigma sessile, depressed sub-globular.

Fruit an aggregate of separate fleshy, indehiscent oblong to cylindrical carpels, each carpel about 20-25 mm long, 10-15 mm wide, densely clothed in simple erect hairs, orange. Seeds 1-6, about 7 mm long, 5 mm diam., usually about four per carpel. Embryo minute.

Features not available.

Endemic to Queensland, occurs in CEQ, mainly between Sarina and the Percy Islands (near Mackay), and southwards to south eastern Queensland near Hervery Bay and Agnes Waters. Occurs in coastal and subcoastal notophyll vine forests and thickets.

This profile information and associated coding has been adapted from Cooper & Cooper (2004), Harden et al. (2014), Jessup (2007), and Kessler (1993).