Small to medium tree to 20 m high, top c. 5 m of canopy rounded; bark thickish, grey-brown. Juvenile and intermediate leaves: lamina broadly elliptic to ovate; margin irregularly toothed or slightly lobed, soon entire; petiole to 10 mm long. Adult leaves alternate and whorled; lamina elliptic to slightly ovate or rhombic, 50–65 mm long, 28–35 mm wide, base long-attenuate, margin slightly crenulate, flat to upturned, not toothed, apex rounded with drip tip less than 5 mm long; petiole 15–18 mm long. Inflorescence multi-flowered and corymbose with many small, white, bisexual flowers; main rachis 20–25 mm long; peduncles c. 10 mm long; pedicels c. 7 mm long. Sepals 5 or 6 lobes, ovate, 1–2 mm long, yellow-green. Petals free, linear-spathulate, 5–9 mm long, creamy-white, aromatic, longitudinal margins recurving. Stamens free, not cohering with tapering filaments, anthers sagittae with a deep sinus, yellow, dehiscing yellow pollen through apical slits. Pistil markedly stipitate, ovary rotund, style elongated, stigmatic development minimal. Fruit unequally bilocular, occasionally trivalved, pear-shaped, 5–6 mm long plus 1 mm stalk; epicarp orange, bullate; mesocarp thin, pithy; endocarp orange-red. Seeds few, usually solitary, inserted basally, angular-reniform, c. 3 mm long, c. 2 mm wide, black.
Apparently restricted to deciduous vine thickets (where it is a canopy emergent), growing in black clay loam on several basalt outcrops; for example, occurs in the 40 Mile Scrub in dry country in northern Queensland, where associated species include Pittosporum spinescens, Melia azedarach, Ozothamnus cassiniodes and Ficus spp.
Home