Pittosporum pimeleoides subsp. majus

Detailed description

Much branched, gynodioecious, decumbent, prostrate, trailing and spreading gynodioecious shrub 0.1–0.6 m tall; confined to ultramafic substrates. Usually multi-trunked from the ground, branches and branchlets slender, wiry, pliant, spreading, arching and layering on contact with soil; coloured grey-brown; branchlets similar but at first densely clad in greyish-white to brown tomentum becoming glabrate with age. Leaves alternate, in distinct whorls (semi-verticillate). Petioles up to 5 mm long, hairy. Lamina 9–30 × 4.5–5–(13), pale green, red-green or dark green above, paler beneath, broadly elliptic, apex acuminate or obtuse, base attenuate, margins entire or finely crenulate, surfaces sparsely hairy with ciliolate margins when young, becoming glabrate, coriaceous. Flowers usually terminal, 4–12 fascicled. Pedicels 2–9 mm, filiform, puberulent, accrescent in fruit, subtended by a whorl of leaves and several 2–3 mm long, caducous, glabrous, ciliolate bud scales. Sepals 4.5–5 × 0.5–1 mm, linear, acuminate, glabrous. Petals 11–12 mm, yellow with a central or margin red stripe, rarely completely yellow or cream, linear, acuminate, fused in a tube to about half way, then spreading and reflexed. Stamens 2.5–6.5 mm, anthers 0.5–2 mm. Ovary 1–2 × 1–1.5 mm, villous, style 1.5–3.5 mm. Stigma capitate, 2-lobed or truncate. Capsules 2-valved, 6–12 × 4–6 mm, green at first brown when mature, ovoid, acuminate, coriaceous, initially covered in long grey hairs otherwise glabrate. Mucilage yellow to dark orange. Seeds 5–18, glossy black, of irregular shape.