Atractocarpus hirtus
Atractocarpus hirtus, commonly known as the hairy gardenia or native loquat, is a plant in the coffee family Rubiaceae, a large family of some 6,500 species with a cosmopolitan distribution. This species is endemic to northeastern Queensland, Australia.
Description
The hairy gardenia is a straggly, woody, rainforest shrub growing up to tall. The stems, leaves and fruits are densely covered in soft hairs, hence the common name. Stipules are present and are around long. The lanceolate leaves are simple and opposite or 3-4 whorled, measuring around long by wide, dark green, and have between 11 and 14 lateral veins on either side of the midrib.Flowers are pentamerous and actinomorphic, quite fragrant and borne in small terminal groups. The green calyx tube is about long with lobes reduced to small teeth. The corolla is white, the corolla tube is long with five lobes measuring in length. The anthers, which do not extend beyond the corolla tube, measure about long; the pistil about long.
This species is gynodioecious, that is, individual plants are either female or hermaphroditic.
The fruits of this plant are a densely hairy drupe, somewhat pear-shaped and measuring about in diameter by long, including the attached calyx tube. The body of the fruit is orange and the calyx tube is green. They contain numerous seeds about long immersed in an orange pulp.
Flowering occurs from May to November, and fruits ripen from December to August.
Taxonomy
Atractocarpus hirtus was first described as Gardenia hirta in 1869 by Ferdinand von Mueller in his work Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae, from a specimen collected in 1867 by John Dallachy near the Tully River. Mueller later transferred it to the genus Randia in his publication Systematic Census of Australian Plants of 1882.In a 1999 revision of the Australian species of Gardenia and Randia, published in Australian Systematic Botany, the Australian botanist C.F. Puttock reassigned this species and gave it the current combination Atractocarpus hirtus.