Cupaniopsis wadsworthii explained

Cupaniopsis wadsworthii, sometimes commonly named duckfoot, or dwarf tuckeroo, is a species of flowering plant in the soapberry family and is endemic to Queensland. It is a slender shrub or small tree with paripinnate leaves with two to eight broadly wedge-shaped or broadly lobed leaflets, and separate male and female flowers arranged in raceme-like thyrses, the fruit a capsule with a seed with an orange aril.

Description

Cupaniopsis wadsworthii grows as a slender shrub up to tall or a small tree up to tall with a dbh of up to . The leaves are paripinnate long on a petiole long, with two to eight broadly wedge-shaped leaflets, long and wide, sometimes with two or three lobes. The leaflets form a distinctive triangular shape, broad at the tip and terminating in a point at the petiole. The flowers are borne on a raceme-like thyrse, long, each flower on a pedicel long. The five sepal lobes are long and hairy on the outside, the usually five petals are egg-shaped, long and densely hairy. Male flowers have eight stamens and female flowers have eight staminodes and an ovary with three locules. The fruit is an orange to yellow capsule with three lobes, each lobe with a glossy dark brown seed covered in a bright orange aril. Fruits ripen from October to December, attracting many birds.

Taxonomy

This species was first formally described in 1863 by Ferdinand von Mueller, who gave it the name Harpullia wadsworthii in his Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae from specimens collected near Rockhampton. In 1879, Ludwig Radlkofer transferred the species to Cupaniopsis as C. wadsworthii.

Distribution and habitat

Cupaniopsis wadsworthii usually grows on hills in rocky soil in rainforests and seasonally dry rainforests at altitudes up to, from Townsville to Maryborough, including on Magnetic Island, in central eastern Queensland.