Pittosporum turneri

Detailed description

Gynodioecious, small tree up to 8 m tall. Growth form columnar, juveniles and sub adults distinctly divaricating. Branches and branchlets of seedlings and saplings up to 1 m tall, sparse, spreading, divaricating, more or less interlacing and filiramulate; sub adult branches and branchlets, numerous, strongly divaricating, hexagonally interlacing and filiramulate; adult branches erect to shortly spreading, more or less fastigiated, weakly divaricating, non-filiramulate. Seedling leaves 5-20 x 2-4 mm, linear, deeply lobed or coarsely toothed, sometimes pinnatifid to lyrate-pinnatifid, bronze-green, red-green to cream or grey-green, often blemished with darker tones of red or brown. Sub adult leaves, firmly fleshy to coriaceous, 3-10 x 2-6 mm, red-green, cream, bronze-green, often flushed pink or maroon, linear to lanceolate, sometimes obovate or narrow-obovate, usually irregularly lobed, toothed or pinnatifid; these forms gradually giving way to adult foliage toward top of tree. Adult leaves rather coriaceous. Petioles stout, 1-2 mm long, fleshy. Leaf lamina 30-60 x 5-10 mm, dark green, green, often flushed with red; oblanceolate, obovate to narrowly obovate, clavate to linear-lanceolate, base cuneate to attenuate, apex obtuse to subacute, margins entire to weakly lobulate. Flowers in terminal 4-10-15-flowered umbels. Pedicels 10-15 mm long. Flowers night-fragrant. Sepals 5, 3-6 mm long, ovate-lanceolate, acute, pale green, sparsely pilose hairy. Petals 5, 8-10 mm, lanceolate, apex obtuse, recurving almost to base at anthesis, pink, red-pink, margins often darker than central portion; sometimes completely white. Male flowers with 5 functional stamens and one rudimentary or functional stigma, anthers yellow. Female flowers with 5 rudimentary stamen, stigma globose. Capsules subglobose, 7-10 mm diameter, 2-valved, valves weakly woody to woody, initially dark green maturing grey-black. Mucilage dark red. Seeds 5-8, globose to irregularly globose, black, surface glossy.