Cryptocarya sclerophylla, commonly known as totempole,[1] is a species of flowering plant in the family Lauraceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is a tree or shrub with elliptic leaves, creamy green, perfumed flowers, and spherical or elliptic black drupes.
Cryptocarya sclerophylla is a tree that typically grows to a height of up to, its stems not buttressed. Its leaves are elliptic, long and wide, on a petiole long. The flowers are creamy green, perfumed, and arranged in panicles about the same length as the leaves. The perianth tube is long and wide, the outer anthers long and wide, the inner anthers long and wide. Flowering occurs from September to November, and the fruit is a spherical or elliptic black drupe, long and wide with cream-coloured cotyledons.[2]
Cryptocarya sclerophylla was first formally described in 1989 by Bernard Hyland in Australian Systematic Botany from specimens he collected near Currumbin Creek in 1982.[3] The specific epithet (sclerophylla) means 'hard-leaved'.[4]
This species of Cryptocarya grows in rainforest, at altitudes between, often in places where there are long periods of water stress, from Gympie in south-east Queensland to the far north coast of New South Wales.[5]
This species of Cryptocarya is listed as "of least concern" under the Queensland Government Nature Conservation Act 1992.