Bertya gummifera
Bertya gummifera is a species of flowering plant in the family Euphorbiaceae and is endemic to New South Wales. It is a sticky shrub with linear leaves, the flowers crowded along the stems, male flowers with 46 to 61 stamens, and female flowers with a glabrous ovary and elliptic capsules.
Description
Bertya gummifera is a sticky shrub that typically grows to a height of, the young growth covered long whitish hairs but later rough or glabrous. The leaves are linear, long and wide, with the edges curved down or rolled under, covering the lower surface. The flowers are borne singly or in pairs on a peduncle long, male flowers on a pedicel up to long with five sepal lobes long and wide. Female flowers are sessile, usually with five elliptic or egg-shaped sepal lobes long and long. Male flowers have 46 to 61 stamens and female flowers have rudimentary petals, a glabrous ovary, and a style long with three spreading pink to red limbs long, each with three or four lobes long. Flowering has been recorded from May to December and the fruit is an elliptic capsule long and wide, usually with a single oblong, dark brown seed long and wide with a creamy-white caruncle.
Taxonomy
Bertya gummifera was first formally described in 1845 by Jules Émile Planchon in Hooker's London Journal of Botany from specimens collected by Allan Cunningham near Wellington.
Distribution and habitat
This species of Bertya grows in a variety of drier habitats, including forest, woodland and open mallee in central New South Wales, mainly between Narrabri, Moonbi, Kandos and the Warrumbungles.