Exbucklandia populnea (R. Br. ex Griff.) R. W. Brown

Habit

Tree

Family Description

Evergreen or deciduous trees or shrubs with simple or stellate hairs. Leaves alternate, simple, pinnately or palmately veined, stipulate. Flowers free or connate in heads, spikes or racemes, uni sexual(plants monoecious) or bisexual, actinomorphic. Calyx with tube adnate to ovary, lobes 5 or absent. Petals 4-6, free, or absent. Stamens 5 or 10-14 or many, free. Lobed disc often present. Overy inferior or semi-inferior, 2-celled; styles 2, free, spreading; ovules 1 or 6-8 or many per cell, axile. Fruit a woody capsule; seeds 2-many, winged or not.. .

Genus Description

Large evergreen trees, glabrous or with few simple hairs. Leaves palmately 5-7-veined at base, entire (or 3-5-lobed in juvenile plants); stipules coriaceous, solitary or paired and coherent, caducous. Flowers coherent in globose, pedunculate, axillary heads; heads with only female or with bisexual flowers. Bisexual flowers: calyx absent; petals 4-6, linear; stamens 10-14, borne on lobed disc; ovary with 6-8 ovules in each cell. Female flowers: calyx with 5 truncate rim-like lobes, petals and stamens absent. Capsules in globose woody heads, each 2-celled, 4-valved, 4-8 seeds in each cell, upper 4-5 seeds sterile, unwinged, lower 1-2 seeds fertile with oblong wing.

Species description

Tree 15-33 m. Leaves coriaceous, broadly ovate, 10-27x7-20 cm, acuminate, base truncate or shallowly cordate, usually glabrous; petioles 2-8 cm; stipules obliquely obovate-oblong, 2-4x1-2 cm, obtuse. Flower heads 2-4 per axil, 5-12-flowered, on peduncles 1-2.5 cm, females 8-10mm diameter, bisexual heads 15-20mm diameter, stamens creamy-white. Fruiting heads 1.7-2.2cm diameter; fertile seeds with wing c 9x2mm.