''Cryptocarya rigida'', commonly known as rose maple, southern maple, rose walnut, pigeonberry ash, forest maple or brown beech, is a species of flowering plant in the family

Lauraceae Lauraceae, or the laurels, is a plant Family (biology), family that includes the bay laurel, true laurel and its closest relatives. This family comprises about 2850 known species in about 45 genus (biology), genera worldwide. They are dicotyled ...

and is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

to eastern Australia. It is a shrub or small tree with lance-shaped to egg-shaped leaves, creamy green flowers, and elliptic black

drupe In botany, a drupe (or stone fruit) is a type of fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin, and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a single shell (the ''pip'' (UK), ''pit'' (US), ''stone'', or ''pyrena'') of hardened endocarp with a seed ...

Description

''Cryptocarya rigida'' is a shrub or small tree that typically grows to a height of with a dbh of about and has grey, thin corky bark, it stems not

buttressed A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient (typically Gothic) buildings, as a means of providing support to act ag ...

. Its leaves are lance-shaped to elliptic, long and wide, covered with soft hairs, and

glaucous ''Glaucous'' (, ) is used to describe the pale grey or bluish-green appearance of the surfaces of some plants, as well as in the names of birds, such as the glaucous gull (''Larus hyperboreus''), glaucous-winged gull (''Larus glaucescens''), ...

on the lower surface. The flowers are usually arranged in

panicle In botany, a panicle is a much-branched inflorescence. (softcover ). Some authors distinguish it from a compound spike inflorescence, by requiring that the flowers (and fruit) be pedicellate (having a single stem per flower). The branches of a p ...

s in leaf axils and shorter than the leaves. They are creamy-green, not perfumed, the

perianth The perianth (perigonium, perigon or perigone in monocots) is the non-reproductive part of the flower. It is a structure that forms an envelope surrounding the sexual organs, consisting of the calyx (sepals) and the corolla (petals) or tepal ...

tube long and wide. The

tepal A tepal is one of the outer parts of a flower (collectively the perianth). The term is used when these parts cannot easily be classified as either sepals or petals. This may be because the parts of the perianth are undifferentiated (i.e. of very ...

s are long and wide, the outer

anthers The stamen (: stamina or stamens) is a part consisting of the male reproductive organs of a flower. Collectively, the stamens form the androecium., p. 10 Morphology and terminology A stamen typically consists of a stalk called the filamen ...

about long and wide, the inner anthers long and wide. Flowering occurs from October to March, and the fruit is an elliptic black drupe, long and wide with creamy

cotyledon A cotyledon ( ; ; "a cavity, small cup, any cup-shaped hollow", gen. (), ) is a "seed leaf" – a significant part of the embryo within the seed of a plant – and is formally defined as "the embryonic leaf in seed-bearing plants, one or mor ...

Taxonomy

''Cryptocarya rigida'' was first formally described in 1864 by

Carl Meissner Carl Daniel Friedrich Meissner (1 November 1800 – 2 May 1874) was a Swiss botanist. Biography Born in Bern, Switzerland on 1 November 1800, he was christened Meisner but later changed the spelling of his name to Meissner. For most of his 40 ...

in de Candolle's '' Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis'' from specimens collected near the Clarence River by

Ferdinand von Mueller Baron Sir Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller, (; 30 June 1825 – 10 October 1896) was a German-Australian physician, geographer, and most notably, a botanist. He was appointed government botanist for the then colony of Victoria, Australia ...

. The

specific epithet In Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin gramm ...

(''rigida'') means 'rigid'.

Distribution and habitat

This species of ''Cryptocarya'' grows in rainforest, especially near the edges of rainforest, at altitudes between from near Springbrook in southern Queensland to

Dungog Dungog is a country town on the Williams River in the Hunter region and a small part of the Mid North Coast region of New South Wales, Australia. Located in the middle of dairy and timber country, it is the centre of the Dungog Shire Local Go ...

and

Ourimbah Ourimbah () is a small township in the Central Coast region of New South Wales, Australia, located about north of the state capital Sydney. Ourimbah is located approximately halfway between Sydney and Newcastle. The township today consists of ...

in New South Wales. The species is extinct in the

Illawarra The Illawarra is a coastal Regions of New South Wales, region in the southeast of the Australian state of New South Wales. It is situated immediately south of Sydney and north of the South Coast, New South Wales, South Coast region. It encompas ...

region (34° S), allegedly seen there in 1818 by Allan Cunningham.

Use in horticulture

Like most Australian species of ''

Cryptocarya ''Cryptocarya'' is a genus of about 360 species of flowering plants in the laurel family, Lauraceae. Most species are trees, occasionally shrubs, distributed through the Neotropical, Afrotropical, Indomalayan, and Australasian realms. Most plant ...

'', removal of the fleshy

aril An aril (), also called arillus, is a specialized outgrowth from a seed that partly or completely covers the seed. An arillode, or false aril, is sometimes distinguished: whereas an aril grows from the attachment point of the seed to the ova ...

is advised to assist seed germination, which is slow but reliable with ''C. rigida''.

References

External links

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q5190855 Laurales of Australia Trees of Australia Flora of New South Wales Flora of Queensland

Flora of New South Wales *''The Flora that are native to New South Wales, Australia''. :*''Taxa of the lowest rank are always included. Higher taxa are included only if endemic''. *The categorisation scheme follows the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Dist ...

rigida Taxa named by Carl Meissner Plants described in 1864