Cerbera inflata
Cerbera inflata, commonly known as the cassowary plum, grey milkwood, Joojooga, or rubber tree, is a plant in the family Apocynaceae endemic to northeast Queensland, specifically the Atherton Tableland and adjacent areas.
Description
Cerbera inflata is a tree up to in height with a grey fissured trunk, and with no buttress roots. Leaves are, lanceolate, dull green above and paler below. They are arranged in whorls and crowded towards the end of the twigs. They measure up to long and wide, with about 35 lateral veins. All parts of the tree produces a copious milky sap when cut.
The inflorescence is a much branched up to with usually more than 50 flowers. The flowers have 5 white sepals, a long corolla tube about in length by wide with 5 free lobes at the end. They are white with a cream or green centre, about in diameter, and have a sweet scent.
Fruits are a bright blue-purple drupe measuring about long by wide, bluntly rounded at the base and slightly pointed at the apex. They each contain a single large seed.
Taxonomy
This species was first described as Cerbera dilatata by the Australian botanist Stanley Thatcher Blake, and published in 1948 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland. That name was subsequently found to be a nomen illegitimum as it had previously been applied to a plant from the Caroline and Mariana Islands in 1927,. Thus it was necessary that this species be renamed, and in 1959 botanist Paul Irwin Forster published a revision of the Australian members of the genus Cerbera, in which he gave this plant its current combination. Any historical collections or observations from Australia that are labelled C. dilatata will be referring to the species C. inflata, while those from outside Australia refer to C. odollam.
Etymology
The species epithet derives from the Latin inflatus, meaning 'inflated' and refers to the corolla tube.
Cerbera inflata is endemic to Queensland. It grows in well developed rainforest in the foothills and uplands from Innisfail to the Atherton Tableland. The altitudinal range is from.
Ecology
Cassowaries eat the fallen fruit whole, and are the major dispersal agent for the species.