Mitrephora diversifolia
Mitrephora diversifolia is a species of flowering plant in the family Annonaceae and is native to Queensland, Ambon Island and New Guinea. It is a tree with egg-shaped leaves, the flowers with cream-coloured and mauve-pink petals, 70 to 85 stamens and 10 to 14 carpels. The fruit is egg-shaped containing up to 8 seeds.
Description
Mitrephora diversifolia is a tree that typically grows to a height of up to. Its leaves are egg-shaped, long, wide on a petiole long and have 9 to 11 pairs of secondary veins. The flowers are arranged singly in leaf axils on a peduncle up to long, the pedicel long. The sepals are long and densely hairy. Its outer petals cream-coloured, egg-shaped with the narower end towards the base, long and wide. The inner petals are long and wide, with a mauve-pink, hairy, spade-shaped or arrow-shaped blade. There are 70 to 85 stamens and 10 to 14 carpels each containing 10 ovules. Flowering mostly occurs between October and March, and fruit is egg-shaped, long and wide, containing up to 8 seeds.
Taxonomy
This species was first described in 1841 by Johan Baptist Spanoghe who gave it the name Unona ? diversifolia in the journal Linnaea. In 1858, Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel transferred the species to the genus Mitrephora as M. diversifolia. The specific epithet means "unlike-" or "different-leaved".
Distribution and habitat
Mitrephora diversifolia grows in vine forest from the tip of Cape York Peninsula to the McIlwraith Range and on Ambon Island in Indonesia, and possibly also in New Guinea.