Cryptocarya laevigata, commonly known as red-fruited laurel, glossy laurel or grey sassafras,[1] is a species of flowering plant in the family Lauraceae and is native to Malesia, New Guinea and eastern Australia. It is a shrub or tree with lance-shaped to elliptic leaves, creamy white, pale green and perfumed flowers, and more or less spherical, red to orange-yellow drupes.
Cryptocarya laevigata is a shrub or tree that typically grows to a height of up to, its stems not buttressed. Its leaves are lance-shaped to elliptic, long and wide on a petiole long. The flowers are arranged in racemes or panicles in leaf axils and shorter than the leaves. They are pale brown, creamy white, pale green and perfumed. The perianth tube is long, wide. The outer tepals are long and wide and the inner tepals are long and wide. The outer anthers are long and wide, the inner anthers long and wide. Flowering occurs from September to December, and the fruit is a spherical, red to orange-yellow drupe long and wide with creamy cotyledons.[2] [3] [4]
Cryptocarya laevigata was first formally described in 1826 by Carl Ludwig Blume in his Bijdragen tot de Flora van Nederlandsch Indie.[5] [6] The specific epithet (laevigata) means "having a polished surface".[7]
Cryptocarya laevigata occurs in Sumatra, Peninsular Malaysia, Borneo, Java, Sulawesi, the Philippines New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, Solomon Islands, and Australia, where it is found in New South Wales north from Lismore and in Queensland. It grows in tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests.
The glossy leaves, small size and attractive red fruit make it suitable as an ornamental tree. Like most Australian Cryptocarya fruit, removal of the slimy red aril is advised to assist seed germination. Roots and shoots usually appear within three to twelve months.
. Alexander Floyd . Rainforest Trees of Mainland South-eastern Australia . Inkata Press . 1989 . 0-909605-57-2 . 179.