Cryptocarya floydii, commonly known as Glenugie laurel or gorge laurel is a species of flowering plant in the family Lauraceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is a tree with lance-shaped leaves, pale green tube-shaped flowers, and spherical black drupes.
Cryptocarya floydii is a tree that typically grows to a height of up to and a trunk dbh of .[1] The trunk is irregular, sometimes fluted, buttressed and multi-stemmed. The leaves are lance-shaped, mostly long, wide and leathery, the upper surface dark green and shiny, the lower surface dull green. The flowers are dull green and borne in panicles that are shorter than the leaves, the perianth tube long and wide. The tepals are long and wide, the outer anthers long and wide, the inner anthers long and wide. Flowering occurs between October and February and the fruit is a spherical black drupe, long and wide.[2] [3]
Cryptocarya floydii was first formally described in 1979 by André Joseph Guillaume Henri Kostermans in the journal Brunonia, from specimens collected on Glenugie Peak near Grafton in 1959.[4]
This species of Cryptocarya grows in drier rainforest, usually in rocky areas, at altitudes between between the Bunya Mountains in southern Queensland and Wollomombi Falls in northern New South Wales.
A thin layer of flesh over the relatively large seed would offer little nourishment for feeding birds. Alexander Floyd considers this fruit to be mimetic, as the fruit resembles more fleshy fruits such as the vine Tetrastigma nitens.[5]
. Alexander Floyd . Rainforest Trees of Mainland South-eastern Australia . Inkata Press . 2008 . 978-0-9589436-7-3 . 182.
. Alexander Floyd . Australian Rainforests in New South Wales . 1 . Surrey Beatty & Sons . 1990 . photo 25 . 0-949324-30-2.