Fagraea fagraeacea
Fagraea fagraeacea, commonly known as yellowheart or pink jitta, is a plant in the gentian family Gentianaceae which is native to New Guinea and Queensland.
Description
Yellowheart is a shrub or small tree that will grow to between high. The trunk has a plaited appearance and may be buttressed. The simple leaves are held on petioles up to long, the blades are usually elliptic, but may be ovate or obovate. They measure up to long and wide, are somewhat rounded at the base and have a narrow elongated "drip tip". The lateral veins are usually indistinct.The inflorescence is a panicle produced at the end of the branches with 15 to 30 flowers, or sometimes more. The fragrant tubular flowers have a green calyx about long, 5 white or cream petals fused into a tube about long, and lobes about long. The stamens are inserted in the upper half of the tube, the style is about long.
The white, cream or pink fruit is, botanical terms, a berry measuring about long by wide, containing several brown seeds in a white pulp.
Taxonomy
Fagraea fagraeacea was originally described as Gardneria fagraeacea by the Victorian government botanist Ferdinand von Mueller, and published in 1868 in his massive work Fragmenta phytographiæ Australiæ. Mueller based his description on material from Rockingham Bay in north Queensland, which was provided to him by the plant collector John Dallachy.In 1916 the English botanist George Claridge Druce reviewed a large number of newly named Australian and African plants that he considered had not been named in accordance with the rules of botanical nomenclature that existed at the time. As a result of this work he gave this species the new combination Fagraea fagraeacea, which was published in the 1916 report to the Botanical Society and Exchange Club of the British Isles in 1917.