Harpullia frutescens, commonly known as dwarf harpullia,[1] is a species of flowering plant in the family Sapindaceae, and is endemic to North Queensland. It is a shrub with paripinnate leaves with 6 to 8 leaflets, white flowers with a pink tinge, and crimson capsules containing 2 seeds with a yellow aril.
Harpullia frutescens is a shrub that typically grows to a height of up to, its young growth covered with downy hairs. Its leaves are paripinnate, long with 6 to 8 elliptic to lance shaped leaflets sometimes tapering to a point, long and wide on a winged petiole long. The flowers are strongly perfumed, borne in clusters of mostly 2 to 4 in upper leaf axils long, each flower on a slender, hairy peduncle up to long. The sepals are long and covered with downy hairs, the petals are white with a pink tinge, and long. There are 5 or 6 stamens, and the ovary covered with woolly hairs. The fruit is a laterally compressed, crimson capsule about long containing two shiny seeds, enclosed in a yellow, cup-shaped aril.[2] [3]
Harpullia frutescens was first formally described in 1889 by Frederick Manson Bailey in a report on the Government Scientific Expedition to the Bellenden-Ker Range.[4] [5] The specific epithet (frutescens) means "becoming bushy".[6]
Dwarf harpullia is common in rainforest from Ayton to the Atherton Tableland area in North Queensland, usually in hilly country.[7]