Acronychia wilcoxiana is a rainforest

Rainforest

Rainforests are forests characterized by high rainfall, with definitions based on a minimum normal annual rainfall of 1750-2000 mm...

 tree in the citrus family

Rutaceae

Rutaceae, commonly known as the rue or citrus family, is a family of flowering plants, usually placed in the order Sapindales.Species of the family generally have flowers that divide into four or five parts, usually with strong scents...

, found in eastern Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. The common name is Silver Aspen. The true aspen

Aspen

Populus section Populus, of the Populus genus, includes the aspen trees and the white poplar Populus alba. The five typical aspens are all native to cold regions with cool summers, in the north of the Northern Hemisphere, extending south at high altitudes in the mountains. The White Poplar, by...

s of the northern hemisphere belong to the genus Populus in the family Salicaceae

Salicaceae

Salicaceae are a family of flowering plants. Recent genetic studies summarized by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group has greatly expanded the circumscription of the family to contain 55 genera....

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Taxonomy

The silver aspen was first described by Ferdinand von Mueller

Ferdinand von Mueller

Baron Sir Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller, KCMG was a German-Australian physician, geographer, and most notably, a botanist.-Early life:...

 in 1875 as Pleiococca wilcoxiana, before being reclassified as Acronychia wilcoxiana by T. G. Hartley in 1974. Common names include doughwood, snowwood, and mushyberry as well as silver aspen. The species name honours James Fowler Wilcox, a 19th century collector of birds and plants in northern New South Wales.

Description

A tree to 15 metres (50 ft) in height, with an appealing canopy of dark green leaves. The stem of the tree can be straight or crooked, though the bole is mostly cylindrical. The bark is brown, somewhat pinkish or dark brown with raised corky protuberances. Small branches are greyish brown, marked with lenticel

Lenticel

A lenticel is an airy aggregation of cells within the structural surfaces of the stems, roots, and other parts of vascular plants. It functions as a pore, providing a medium for the direct exchange of gasses between the internal tissues and atmosphere, thereby bypassing the periderm, which would...

s. The leaves are opposite on the stem, 6 to 22 cm long, 2.5 to 9 cm wide, oil dots easily seen under a magnifying lens. Leaf stalks between 3 to 30 mm long.

Flowers, fruit and germination

Small white flowers appear from the leaf axils, in the months of January to May. The fruit is a moist fleshy drupe

Drupe

In botany, a drupe is a fruit in which an outer fleshy part surrounds a shell of hardened endocarp with a seed inside. These fruits develop from a single carpel, and mostly from flowers with superior ovaries...

. Inside are black oval seeds, around 4 mm long. Fruit are eaten by rainforest birds, including the Wompoo Fruit-Dove

Wompoo Fruit-Dove

The Wompoo Fruit Dove , also known as Wompoo Pigeon, is the largest of Fruit Doves native to New Guinea and Australia.-Description:...

. Germination from seed is not easy. However, the removal of the fleshy aril

Aril

An aril is any specialized outgrowth from the funiculus that covers or is attached to the seed. It is sometimes applied to any appendage or thickening of the seed coat in flowering plants, such as the edible parts of the mangosteen and pomegranate fruit, the mace of the nutmeg seed, or the...

 from the seed will improve results. Drowning of insect larvae may also be of use. Seeds may germinate after 6 to 12 months.

Habitat

The habitat of this plant is seaside rainforest on sand, but it also grows in warm temperate rainforests away from the coast. A.G.Floyd records it as far south as Primbee in the Illawarra

Illawarra

Illawarra is a region in the Australian state of New South Wales. It is a coastal region situated immediately south of Sydney and north of the Shoalhaven or South Coast region. It encompasses the cities of Wollongong, Shellharbour, Shoalhaven and the town of Kiama. The central region contains Lake...

 district, south of Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

. Discovered by Anders Bofeldt. There are only eight mature trees at Primbee. It grows as far north as Fraser Island, in south eastern Queensland

Queensland

Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...

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