Stenocarpus reticulatus, commonly known as black silky oak,[1] is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to north Queensland. It is a tree with simple leaves, groups of strongly-perfumed, creamy-white flowers and flattened, semi-circular follicles.
Stenocarpus reticulatus is a tree that typically grows to a height of up to with its branchlets covered with tiny hairs when young. The leaves are lance-shaped to elliptical, long and wide on a petiole up to long. The flower groups are arranged in leaf axils with mostly eleven to fifteen flowers on a peduncle long, the individual flowers creamy-white and about long, each on a pedicel long. Flowering occurs from February to August and the fruit is a flattened, semi-circular follicle up to long, containing up to thirty winged seeds.[2]
Stenocarpus reticulatus was first formally described in 1919 by Cyril Tenison White in the Botany Bulletin of the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Stock from specimens collected by H.W. Mocatta on the Atherton Tableland.[3]
Black silky oak is restricted to the Atherton Tableland at altitudes between above sea level.[2]