Australian Tropical Rainforest Plants - Online edition

Xylosma ovata Benth.


Shrub (woody or herbaceous, 1-6 m tall)
Tree
Family

Bentham, G. (1863), Flora Australiensis 1: 108. Type: "Queensland. N.E. coast, A. Cunningham.”

Stem

Shrub or small tree to 5 m high, bark fawn to greyish. Stems minutely hairy becoming hairless.

Leaves

Leaves simple, alternate. Stipules 2, free, ovate, 0.4-0.8 mm long. Petiole 2-3 mm long. Leaf blades ovate-elliptic, rarely obovate, 2-5 cm long, 1-2.5 cm wide, base cuneate to obtuse, margin entire, crenate or toothed, apex shortly acute to obtuse. Venation of 4-6 pairs of lateral veins. Domatia absent. Surfaces hairless. Basal and marginal glands not present.

Flowers

Inflorescences axillary, flowers in racemes, sometimes short and clustered, or solitary. Flowers unisexual, dioecious, actinomorphic, 4-merous. Tepals (sepals) 4, free or shortly connate at base, outer pair ovate, inner pair broadly obovate-orbicular, c. 1 mm long; disc flat, c. 7 lobed. Male flowers with 10-12 stamens present, filaments glabrous c. 1.3 mm long; rudimentary ovary ± present. Female flower with staminodes absent; ovary glabrous, superior, style very short with 2 bilobed stigmas.

Fruit

Fruit fleshy, ovoid-globose, about 5 mm diameter, red, with 1-4 seeds embedded in flesh of fruit.

Seedlings

Features not available.

Distribution and Ecology

Occurs in CEQ, in coastal areas between the Whitsunday Islands and Agnes Waters (SE of Gladstone). Grows in littoral rainforest and vine thickets.

Natural History & Notes

This profile information and associated coding has been adapted from Jessup (1982) and Harden et al. (2014).

Synonyms
Myroxylon ovatum (Benth.) Kuntze, Revisio Generum Plantarum 1: 44, (1891). Xylosma ovata Benth. var. ovata, Notizblatt des Botanischen Gartens und Museums zu Berlin-Dahlem: 297, (1938).
RFK Code
3642
Copyright © CSIRO 2020, all rights reserved.