Cryptocarya lividula, commonly known as blue laurel,[1] is a species of flowering plant in the family Lauraceae and is endemic to north Queensland. It is a tree with lance-shaped to egg-shaped leaves, creamy green, unpleasantly perfumed flowers, and more or less spherical, purplish-black drupes.
Cryptocarya lividula is a tree that typically grows to a height of up to, its stems usually buttressed. Its leaves are lance-shaped to egg-shaped, long and wide with a conspicuous, bluish sheen, on a petiole long. The flowers are arranged in panicles in leaf axils shorter than the leaves. They are creamy green and unpleasantly perfumed. The perianth tube is long, wide. The outer anthers are long and wide, the inner anthers long and wide. Flowering occurs from November to January, and the fruit is a purplish-black, more or less spherical drupe, long and wide with cream-coloured cotyledons.[2] [3]
Cryptocarya lividula was first formally described in 1989 by Bernard Hyland in Australian Systematic Botany from specimens collected in 1980.[4] The specific epithet (lividula) means 'a dull, bluish grey'.[5]
Cryptocarya lividula grows in rainforest at altitudes between between Cooktown and Koombooloomba in north Queensland.
This Cryptocarya is listed as of "least concern" under the Queensland Government Nature Conservation Act 1992.