Elaeocarpus holopetalus, commonly known as black olive berry, mountain blueberry, or mountain quandong,[1] is species of flowering plant in the family Elaeocarpaceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is a shrub or small tree with regularly toothed, lance-shaped to egg-shaped leaves, racemes of white flowers and black, oval fruit.
Elaeocarpus holopetalus is a shrub or small tree typically growing to a height of, although there are rare specimens are up to tall and wide at the base. The trunk is straight with relatively smooth dark grey or brown outer bark with some fissures and wrinkles. Young branchlets are densely covered with woolly-brownish or velvety hairs. The leaves are lance-shaped to elliptic, or egg-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, mostly long and wide on a petiole long. The leaves are mid to dark green above, paler below and the edges have regular teeth. The flowers are pendent and arranged in racemes long with up to seven flowers on softly-hairy, robust pedicels long. The flowers have five narrow triangular sepals about and wide, densely hairy on the back. The five petals are white, sometimes flushed with pink, about long and wide, the tips sometimes with shallow lobes. There are between fifteen and twenty stamens. Flowering occurs in November and December and the fruit is an oval, maroon drupe turning blackish and long when mature.[2] [3] [4] [5]
Elaeocarpus holopetalus was first formally described in 1861 by Ferdinand von Mueller in Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae.[6] [7]
Black olive berry grows in and near the edges of cooler rainforest at altitudes up to from near Dorrigo, Ebor and Chaelundi National Park in northern New South Wales to East Gippsland in north-eastern Victoria.