Pittosporum dallii

Detailed description

Small spreading tree up to 4–6 × 3–4m, forming a broad canopy crown. Bark dark grey to grey-black. Branches stout, ascending to spreading. Branchlets initially purple-black to reddish-purple or brown, sparsely to distinctly puberulent, maturing grey, glabrate. Leaves alternate to subopposite or whorled, crowded toward branchlet tips; petioles stout, 3–20mm, initially sparsely puberulent, glabrate; lamina 50–100 × 20–40mm, oblong-elliptic, lanceolate, lanceolate-elliptic, rarely obovate, apex obtuse, acute or acuminate, base attenuate, cuneate or acute, margins coarsely serrate, subentire or entire, thickened, slightly revolute, dark green-brown to dark-green above, paler beneath, glabrous, coriaceous; midrib raised above and beneath, secondary veins evident, 14–18 either side of midrib. Inflorescences in condensed, terminal, compound umbels; peduncles subtended by a whorl of leaves and numerous caducous, glabrous, ciliate bud scales 15–22mm, peduncles and pedicels 4-angular, 10–20mm long, accrescent in fruit, white-tomentose, each peduncle bearing 1–6 pedicels, each subtended by caducous, glabrous, linear bracts up to 10mm long. Flowers night-fragrant, gynodioecious. Sepals 5.0–6.0 × 0.5–1.0mm, linear, glabrous; petals 8.0–9.0 × 3.0–3.5mm obovate, linear-oblong, obtuse, spreading from base, white or cream, sometimes with red stripes. Male flowers: stamens 4, filaments 7–8mm, cream, anthers 2–3 × 3mm, yellow, reflexed; gynoecium rudimentary or functional. female; flowers: stamens 4 rudimentary (often reduced to staminodes); ovary 1.5–3.3 × 0.5–1.5mm, globose to ellipsoid, glabrous; style c. 2mm; stigma truncate. Capsules in dense clusters, 15 × 9mm, ellipsoid, ellipsoid-oblong, 2-valved, valves green, greenish brown to black, coriaceous, deciduous, immersed in orange-yellow resinous pulp. Muciliage dark red or orange-yellow. Seeds 20–28, trigonal to irregular, lustrous dark red, held together by a persistent papery, cone-shaped endocarp, long after the valves have dropped.