Cryptocarya cunninghamii



Cryptocarya cunninghamii, commonly known as Cunningham's laurel or coconut laurel, is a species of flowering plant in the laurel family and is endemic to northern Australia. It is a tree with oblong to elliptic leaves, the flowers creamy-green and tube-shaped, and the fruit a spherical black to purplish-blackdrupe.

Description
Cryptocarya cunninghamii is a tree that typically grows to a height of up to 25 m, its stem sometimes buttressed. Its leaves are oblong to elliptic, 65–135 mm long and 24–56 mm wide on a petiole 5–12 mm long. The flowers are creamy-green, unpleasantly perfumed, and arranged in panicles usually shorter than the leaves. The perianth tube is 1.0 – 1.5 mm long and 1.2–1.7 mm wide, the tepals 1.3–2.0 mm long, 0.9–1.1 mm wide and hairy. The outer anthers are 0.7–0.8 mm long and 0.5–0.6 mm wide and glabrous, the inner anthers 0.4-0.7 mm long. Flowering occurs from May to October, and the fruit is a spherical black to purplish-black drupe 13–15 mm long and 13–16 mm wide.

Taxonomy
Cryptocarya cunninghamii was first formally described in 1864 by Carl Meissner in de Candolle's Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis from specimens collected by Allan Cunningham near the Hunter River.

Distribution and habitat
Cunningham's laurel grows in shallow or rocky soils in gorges with sandstone boulders, in coastal lowland rainforest and monsoon rainforest at altitudes from sea level to 500 m, in the Northern Kimberley and Victoria Bonaparte bioregions of Western Australia, the Arnhem Coast, Arnhem Plateau, Daly Basin, Darwin Coastal, Pine Creek, Tiwi Cobourg and Victoria Bonaparte bioregions of the Northern Territory, and the Cape York Peninsula, Wet Tropics and Hinchinbrook Island of Queensland. It probably also occurs in New Guinea.