Myoporum platycarpum
Myoporum platycarpum, known by several common names including sugarwood, false sandalwood and ngural is a plant in the figwort family, Scrophulariaceae. It is rounded with bright green foliage as a young shrub and roughly fissured, dark grey bark when mature. Sugarwood is endemic to the southern half of continental Australia.
Description
Sugarwood is a rounded shrub or small tree growing to a height of with foliage and branches that are glabrous but often covered with small raised, wart-like tubercles. The bark on mature specimens is rough, dark grey, flaky bark. Its leaves are arranged alternately and are usually long, wide, linear to elliptic in shape and usually have small teeth or serrations in the outer half. The leaves are often curved or have a hook on the end and both surfaces are deep green in colour.The flowers are borne in groups of about 5 to 8 on a stalk long. The flowers have five triangular sepals and five petals, joined at their bases to form a tube. The petals are white or very pale pink to purple sometimes spotted orange or yellow. The tube is about long and the lobes are spreading, blunt and long. The inside of the tube and part of the lobes are hairy. There are 4 stamens which extend beyond the petals. The main flowering season is from August to November and the fruits that follow are green and fleshy at first but dry when mature.
Taxonomy and naming
Myoporum platycarpum was first formally described by botanist Robert Brown in Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae in 1810.There are two subspecies:Myoporum platycarpum R.Br. subsp. platycarpum has petal lobes that are shorter than the petal tube and as a mature tree has curved or bending branches;Myoporum platycarpum subsp. perbellum Chinnock has petal lobes that are equal to or longer than the petal tube and as a mature tree has straight branches.
The specific epithet platycarpum is derived from the ancient Greek platys, broad, flat; karpos, fruit. The epithet perbellum is from the "Latin, perbellum very beautiful".