Lepiderema pulchella


Lepiderema pulchella, commonly known as fine-leaved tuckeroo, is a species of flowering plant in the family Sapindaceae and is endemic to coastal eastern Australia. It is a tree with pinnate, glossy light green leaves with four to fourteen leaflets, panicles of yellow-orange flowers and brown, spherical to three-lobed fruit.

Description

Lepiderema pulchella is a tree that typically grows to a height of and is mostly glabrous. The leaves are pinnate, long on a petiole long with four to fourteen leaflets, the leaflets narrow elliptic to lance-shaped, more or less curved, long, wide and with wavy edges. The flowers are arranged in panicles long in leaf axils, each flower on a pedicel long. The flowers are yellow-orange and long, the sepals long. The fruit is a brown, spherical to three-lobed capsule in diameter containing dark brown seeds about long, the fruit maturing in December.

Taxonomy

Lepiderema pulchella was first formally described in 1907 by Ludwig Adolph Timotheus Radlkofer in ''Die Natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien Nachtr.''

Distribution and habitat

Fine-leaved tuckeroo grows on creek and river banks and at the edge of rainforest from far south-eastern Queensland to the Tweed River in New South Wales.

Conservation status

This tuckeroo is classified as "vulnerable" under the Queensland Government Nature Conservation Act 1992.