Austrobaileya scandens

Location & distribution maps

Plant  information

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:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrobaileya (2023)