Doryphora aromatica, commonly known as sassafras, northern sassafras, northern grey sassafras, net sassafras or grey sassafras,[1] is a species of flowering plant in the Southern Sassafras Family Atherospermataceae and is endemic to north-east Queensland. It is a tree with elliptic or egg-shaped leaves with the narrower end towards the base, white flowers with 5 stamens and 6 to 8 carpels, and achenes splitting to release feather-like fruits.
Doryphora aromatica is a tree that typically grows to high. Its leaves are elliptic to egg-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, long and wide on a petiole long, and emit an aromatic odour when crushed.[2] The edges of the leaves are sometimes shallowly toothed, and both surfaces have a prominent midvein. The flowers are white with 4 tepals long and wide, the androecium with 3 whorls of 5 stamens and 6 to 11 staminodes, and there are 6 to 8 carpels. Flowering occurs from February to June and the achenes are long and in diameter, and split to release fruit with feather-like hairs.
This species was first formally described in 1886 by Frederick Manson Bailey who gave it the name Daphnandra aromatica in A Synopsis of the Queensland Flora from a specimen collected near the Johnstone River br Thomas Lane Bancroft.[3] [4] In 1958, Lindsay Stuart Smith transferred the species to Doryphora as D. aromatica.[5]
Doryphora aromatica is widespread in north-east Queensland where it grows in rainforest along creeks and gullies.
The leaves of this species are food for the larval stages of Macleay's swallowtail (Graphium macleayanus) and blue triangle butterfly (Graphium sarpedon).