http://www.metrotrees.com.au/
Wanted to check up on those aerial roots. Now I see that the foliage is quite different that which Hooker presents in the Bot. Mag. Wouldn't be the first time he illustrated the wrong tree or mixup several species on one plate.
http://www.anbg.gov.au/cpbr/cd-keys/euclid3/euclidsample/html/Angophora_floribunda.htm
Fruit pedicellate (pedicels 0.3–1.4 cm long), barrel-shaped to cup-shaped, (0.6)0.7–1.2 cm long, 0.7–1.1 cm wide, longitudinally ribbed, disc descending, valves 3 or 4, enclosed.
Chittenden RHS Dict. says that Angophora intermedia is grown in many Cornish gardens, often as Metrosideros floribunda.
So we have a problem with homonyms here.
Hooker's plant must be: Acmena floribunda = ? Syzygium floribundum K. Schum. & Lauterb.
So it is a lilly pilly after all.
Myrtaceae Acmena floribunda (Sm.) DC. Prodromus 3 1828
nom. illeg. non Metrosideros floribunda Vent. Base name for Acmena floribunda (Smith) DC.; Angophora floribunda (Smith) Sweet. IPNI
Curtis's Botanical Magazine Nº 5480
Acmena floribunda; foliis pellucido-punctatis ovali-lanceolatis utrinque acumi-natis.
Acmena floribunda. De Cand. Prodr. v. 3. p. 262.
Metrosideros floribunda. Sm. Trans. Linn. Soc. v. 3. p. 267. Vent. Malmais, t. 75.
Back to my earlier posting about Lillypilly.
Australian Plant Census does not accept Acmena genus
Acmena DC. = Syzygium Gaertn.
All in all I'd say Walter Oate's plant was a Syzygium - that is still there - growing next to the Metrosiderus (that has abundant aerial roots).
We all make mistakes. Certainly had me confused for a while.
2 comments:
That illustration from Curtis's Botanical Magazine is most certainly of Syzygium smithii,still known to most as Acmena smithii. Syzygium (Waterhousea)floribundum has longer narrower leaves with undulate margins,and the fruit are typically pale creamy green when ripe.
The endless re-shuffling of botanical names is exhausting, and the "collapsing " of Acmena,Acmenosperma,Cleistocalyx and Waterhousea back into Syzygium seems ,for most practical horticultural work,superfluous. There is a beautiful,rare tree known as Aniseed Myrtle or Ringwood,which started out in genus Backhousia, became the monotypic Anetholea,and has now been renamed as Syzygium anisatum. The fruit are dry and woody while all other Australian Syzygium are fleshy...
Now those ratbag taxonomists have returned Callistemon into the genus Melaleuca!
Just off to work - will reply later.
Gerald
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