''Buckinghamia ferruginiflora'', also known as Noah's oak or spotted oak, is a species of rainforest tree in the protea family, one of two in the genus that is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found else ...

to the

Wet Tropics of Queensland The Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Site consists of approximately 8,940 km2 of Australian wet tropical forests growing along the north-east Queensland portion of the Great Dividing Range. The Wet Tropics of Queensland meets all f ...

, north-eastern Australia. Although the tree's differences from its congener had been known since the 1970s, it was only formally described by Donald Foreman and Bernard Hyland in 1988 in the journal '' Muelleria''.

Description

The species grows naturally up to about in height. It has branchlets which are often hairy; leaves long, wide; buds, shoots and flower structures with dense ferruginous (rusty coloured) hairs. The flowers form compound

inflorescence An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a Plant stem, stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphology (biology), Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of sperma ...

s long; individual flowers are creamy brown, with dense rusty hairs on the

tepal A tepal is one of the outer parts of a flower (collectively the perianth). The term is used when these parts cannot easily be classified as either sepals or petals. This may be because the parts of the perianth are undifferentiated (i.e. of very ...

s' outer surfaces; the styles are shorter () than those of ''B. celsissima'' (). The fruit follicles are long; the seeds flat with a small wing.

Distribution and habitat

The species is restricted to the area between Bloomfield and the

Daintree River The Daintree River is a river that rises in the Daintree Rainforest near Cape Tribulation in Far North Queensland, Australia. The river is located about northwest of Cairns in the UNESCO World Heritagelisted Wet Tropics of Queensland. The area ...

, in mature lowland and upland rainforest, with an altitudinal range from sea level to 350 m.

References

{{Taxonbar, from= Q15573440 ferruginiflora Flora of Queensland Endemic flora of Australia Proteales of Australia Taxa named by Bernard Hyland Taxa named by Don Foreman Plants described in 1988