Acronychia baeuerlenii, commonly known as Byron Bay acronychia,[1] is a species of rainforest shrub or small tree endemic to eastern Australia. It has simple, glabrous leaves, small groups of flowers and fleshy oval fruit.
Acronychia baeuerlenii is a shrub or tree that typically grows to a height of . Its trunk is smooth, grey about in diameter and has more or less cylindrical young branchlets. The leaves are arranged in opposite pairs, simple, glossy green, glabrous and elliptical, long and wide on a petiole long. The flowers are white or cream-coloured and arranged in leaf axils in small cymes long, each flower on a glabrous pedicel long. The four sepals are wide and the four petals long and there are eight stamens. Flowering occurs between October and February and the fruit is a fleshy, creamy to light green, oval, four-celled drupe in diameter with eight ribs. The fruit matures between March and May and each cell contain one or two sticky black seeds long.[2] [3]
Acronychia baeuerlenii was first formally described in 1974 by Thomas Gordon Hartley in the Journal of the Arnold Arboretum from specimens collected near Burringba in 1898.[4] [5]
Byron Bay acronychia is found between the Richmond River, New South Wales in New South Wales to Lamington National Park just over the border in Queensland. It is an understorey plant in warm temperate rainforest, occasionally in sub tropical rainforest on richer alluvial or basaltic soils, up to above sea level.
Byron Bay acronychia is classified as of "least concern" under the Queensland Government Nature Conservation Act 1992.[6]
The leaves of this species contain a number of essential oils.[7]