Jagera (plant)

Jagera is a genus of 4 species of forest trees known to science, constituting part of the plant family Sapindaceae.

They grow naturally in the rainforests and associated forests of eastern Australia, New Guinea and the Moluccas.

In Australia, Jagera pseudorhus is the most well known, and commonly named foambark, due to the saponins in the bark foaming after heavy rain. Indigenous Australians use this foam as the de-oxygenator of waterway pools for temporarily suffocating their fish enabling easy catching.

The genus is named after Herbert de Jager, a Dutch orientalist and associate of the botanist Georg Eberhard Rumphius.

In the last few decades various new names have been formally published, numbers of them subsequently corrected to synonyms of earlier names and a few remaining recognised as genuine new species or varieties.

One recognised species in Malesia apparently remains still to be formally described.

Species

 * Jagera javanica – New Guinea, Moluccas (Indonesia)
 * synonyms: J. serrata, J. speciosa , J. macrophylla


 * Jagera madida, Daintree foambark – NE. Qld endemic />
 * synonyms: J. javanica subsp. australiana, misapplication: J. serrata ,


 * Jagera pseudorhus, Foambark, ferntree, pink foambark, ferntop, pink tamarind – NSW, Qld, Australia, New Guinea
 * var. integerrima – Atherton Tableland, Qld, Australia endemic
 * var. pseudorhus – NSW, Qld, Australia, New Guinea


 * Formerly included here:
 * Jagera dasyantha and J. discolor    ⇒  Cnesmocarpon dasyantha  – New Guinea, Australia

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