Cryptocarya saccharata, commonly known as sugar cane laurel, or corduroy laurel,[1] is a species of flowering plant in the family Lauraceae and is endemic to Queensland. It is a tree with lance-shaped leaves, creamy green, perfumed flowers, and elliptic or pear-shaped black to bluish-black drupes.
Cryptocarya saccharata is a tree that typically grows to a height of up to, its stems sometimes buttressed. Its leaves are lance-shaped, long and wide, on a petiole long and glaucous on the lower surface. The flowers are creamy green, perfumed, and arranged in panicles shorter than the leaves. The perianth tube is long and wide, the outer tepals long and wide, the outer tepals long and wide. The outer anthers are long and wide, the inner anthers long and wide. Flowering occurs in November and December, and the fruit is an elliptic or pear-shaped, black or bluish-black drupe, long and wide with yellowish cotyledons.[2]
Cryptocarya saccharata was first formally described in 1989 by Bernard Hyland in Australian Systematic Botany from specimens collected in 1976.[3] The specific epithet (saccharata) means 'sugary' or 'looking as if sprinkled with sugar'.[4]
This species of Cryptocarya grows in rainforest, at altitudes between, often in soils derived from granite, from the Windsor Tableland to near Townsville in north-east Queensland.
This species of Cryptocarya is listed as "of least concern" under the Queensland Government Nature Conservation Act 1992.[5]