Bosistoa pentacocca, commonly known as ferny-leaf bosistoa,[1] native almond or union nut,[2] is a species of tree that is endemic to eastern Australia. It has pinnate leaves arranged in opposite pairs with between three and thirteen leaflets and panicles of small flowers arranged in leaf axils or on the ends of branches. It grows along streams in rainforest.
Bosistoa pentacocca is a tree that typically grows to a height of about . It has grey, blotchy and scaly bark and pinkish-red new growth. The leaves are pinnate, long on a petiole long and there are between three and thirteen elliptical to lance-shaped leaflets. The leaflets are long and wide, the side leaflets sessile or with a petiolule up to long and the end leaflet sessile or on a petiolule up to long. The flowers are long and arranged in panicles in leaf axils or on the ends of branchlets. The sepals are about long and joined for most of their length, the petals long. Flowering occurs from January to February and the fruit is a follice long and wide containing a single seed long.
Ferny-leaf bosistoa was first formally described in1862 by Ferdinand von Mueller who gave it the name Euodia pentacocca and published the description in Fragmenta phytographiae Australiae.[3] [4]
In 1873, Henri Ernest Baillon changed the name to Bosistoa pentacocca in his book Histoire des Plantes.[5] [6]
In 2013, Paul Irwin Forster describe two subspecies and the names have been accepted by the Australian Plant Census:
Bosistoa pentacocca grows along streams in rainforest, often dry rainforest and occurs between Bowen in eastern-central Queensland and the Clarence River in north-eastern New South Wales. Subspecies connaricarpa has a more limited distribution between Dryander and Gympie.