Elaeocarpus kirtonii, commonly known as silver quandong, white quandong, brown hearted quandong, brownheart, mountain beech, Mowbullan whitewood, pigeonberry ash, white beech or whitewood,[1] is species of flowering plant in the family Elaeocarpaceae and is endemic to eastern Australia. It is a large rainforest tree with buttress roots, regularly toothed, narrow elliptic to narrow oblong leaves, racemes of white flowers and pale blue, oval fruits.
Elaeocarpus kirtonii is a large and often dominant tree, typically growing to a height of with a diameter of about, but sometimes to and diameter. There are buttress roots to a height of and the outer bark is silvery grey and thin, with small pustules. New growth is salmon-pink, the leaves clustered near the ends of the branchlets, narrow elliptic to narrow oblong, long and wide on a petiole long. The leaves are dull green with prominent veins, regularly spaced teeth on the edges and turn red before falling. The flowers are arranged along racemes mostly long with between fifteen and twenty sweet-scented flowers, each on a pedicel up to long. The five sepals are very narrow egg-shaped to triangular, long and wide. The five petals are white, long and wide with about twenty-four linear lobes at the tip. There are between twenty-five and thirty stamens. Flowering occurs from January to March and the fruit is a pale blue, oval drupe long, maturing from October to January and containing a hard, sculptured stone.[2] [3]
Elaeocarpus kirtonii was first formally described in 1886 by Frederick Manson Bailey in A Synopsis of the Queensland Flora, from an unpublished description by Ferdinand von Mueller.[4] [5] The specific epithet (kirtonii) honours W. Kirton, who collected samples of the tree at Bulli in 1885 for Ferdinand von Mueller.
Silver quandong grows from near Milton (35° S) in New South Wales to Eungella National Park (20° S) in tropical Queensland. It grows in tropical, sub-tropical and warm temperate rainforests but is often also seen in cooler and moister sites on volcanic soils and on the richer alluvial soils.
The fruit of E. kirtonii is eaten by a large variety of rainforest birds.
This quandong is listed as of "least concern" under the Queensland Government Nature Conservation Act 1992.[6]