Austrobaileya
Austrobaileya
Austrobaileya
Wikipedia links: Angiosperms > Basal angiosperms > Austrobaileyales > Austrobaileya scandens
Other links:
Common name: Austrobaileya
Conservation status: Rare
Etymology:
Flowers:
Has large and solitary flowers that are arranged in a spiral with pale green petals
Flowers are pollinated by flies
To attract pollinators, its flowers release a rotting fish smell
Fruit:
Their fruits are apricot-coloured and contain tightly packed seeds, similar in shape to chestnuts
The fruit is shaped like a pear or eggplant
Fruits have been known to grow to sizes of 70 x 50 mm
Leaves:
The plant has a distinctive blue-green colour foliage
The leaves are leathery, veined and simple
The leaves produce essential oils in spherical ethereal oil cells
Their foliage is damaged by oxidation in direct sunlight, so it tends to grow beneath the rainforest canopy, in low-sunlight and very humid conditions
Like many other flowering plants growing in the understory of tropical rainforest, it does not have palisade mesophyll tissue or low leaf photosynthetic rates
Stem & branches:
It can grow up to 15 m long
Roots:
Habit:
Austrobaileya plants grow as woody lianas or vines
Their main growing stems loosely twine, with straight, extending, leafy branches
Habitat:
Endemic to the Wet Tropics rainforests of Queensland
The species is well adapted to rainforests, where it can wind around tall woody trees that form the canopy
It is evolved for fitness in the wet tropical rainforest’s conditions of dampness, humidity, high-light canopy and low-light understory
Distribution:
Northeastern Queensland
Additional notes:
Austrobaileya is the sole genus consisting of a single species that constitutes the entire flowering plant family Austrobaileyaceae
It relies strongly on vegetative reproduction for continuation of the species.
It is the oldest (land )species of flowering plants in Australia that requires pollination
It is one of many ancient plants found in Wet Tropics that have survived millions of years of climatic and geological changes
Sources of information:
(2023)