Elaeocarpus carolinae


Elaeocarpus carolinae is a species of flowering plant in the family Elaeocarpaceae and is endemic to north-east Queensland. It is a tree with buttress roots at the base of the trunk, elliptic to oblong leaves with wavy-toothed edges, flowers with five white petals with lobed tips and spherical blue to purple fruit.

Description

Elaeocarpus carolinae is a tree that typically grows to a height or with buttress roots at the base of the trunk. The leaves are grouped near the ends of the twigs, elliptic to oblong with between ten and twenty-five wavy teeth on the edges, long and wide on a petiole long. The flowers are borne in groups of up to ten on a rachis long, each flower on a winged pedicel long. The flowers have five narrow egg-shaped sepals long and wide. The five petals are white, narrow oblong, long and about wide with thin lobes at the tip, and there are fifteen or sixteen stamens. The fruit is a more or less spherical drupe about long and wide.

Taxonomy

Elaeocarpus carolinae was first formally described in 1984 by Bernard Hyland and Mark James Elgar Coode in the Kew Bulletin from material collected in 1979.

Distribution and habitat

Elaeocarpus carolinae is endemic to north-east Queensland, where it is only known from the Windsor Tableland growing in rainforest at altitudes of.

Conservation status

This quandong is listed as of 'least concern' under the Queensland Government Nature Conservation Act 1992.