Irvingbaileya


Irvingbaileya is a monotypic genus—that is, a genus that contains just one species—of flowering plants in the family Stemonuraceae. The sole species is Irvingbaileya australis, commonly known as buff beech or wax berry, a rainforest tree endemic to Queensland, Australia.

Description

Irvingbaileya australis is a small tree growing to about high. The leaves are arranged alternately on the twigs, are held on short petioles, and measure up to long and wide. They are narrowly elliptic in shape, with 5–8 pairs of lateral veins either side of the midrib.
The inflorescences are produced either terminally or in the. They are s up to long, carrying up to 20 small flowers. This species is dioecious, meaning that male and female flowers are borne on separate plants.
The fruit is distinctive — a green, flattened, elliptic drupe about long, wide and containing a single seed, with a white, succulent, waxy appendage attached to one side.

Taxonomy

The species was first described—as Tylecarpus australis, family Icacinaceae—in 1918 by the Australian botanist Cyril Tenison White and published in Contributions to the Queensland flora in the Botany Bulletin of the Department of Agriculture, Queensland. The type specimen was collected near the Johnstone River south of Cairns
In 1940 the American botanist and Icacinaceae specialist Richard A. Howard moved the species to the genus Medusanthera, and then in 1943 to the newly-created genus Irvingbaileya. Later still the family Icacinaceae was found to be polyphyletic, and in 2001 the Swedish botanist Jesper Kårehed moved this genus to Stemonuraceae.

Etymology

The genus name Irvingbaileya was chosen by Howard to honour Irving Widmer Bailey, an American botanist known for his work in plant anatomy. The specific epithet australis means southern, and refers to the plant's origin in Australia.

Distribution and habitat

This species is endemic to northeastern Queensland, and is found at altitudes from sea level mostly to about, although collections have been made at up to. It grows in well developed rainforest from near Rossville to near Tully.

Conservation

, this species has been assessed to be of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and by the Queensland Government under its Nature Conservation Act.

Ecology

The fallen fruit is collected by male satin bowerbirds, and used as decoration for their bowers. They are also eaten by a variety of fauna, including cassowaries, giant white-tailed rats and other rodents, crimson rosellas, spectacled flying foxes and musky rat-kangaroos.