Bertya polystigma is a species of flowering plant in the family Euphorbiaceae and is endemic to Queensland. It is a monoecious shrub with many branches, strap-like to narrowly oblong leaves, flowers borne singly or rarely in pairs, and elliptic capsules with a light brown to reddish-brown seed.
Description Bertya polystigma is a monoecious shrub that typically grows to a height of up to and has many branches. Its leaves are strap-like to narrowly oblong, long and wide on a petiole long. The upper surface of the leaves is green with a few star-shaped hairs, and the lower surface is white and densely covered with star-shaped hairs. The flowers are borne singly or rarely in pairs in leaf axils on a peduncle long. There are four to six strap-like to egg-shaped outer bracts long and wide and shorter inner bracts. Male flowers are on a pedicel long with five light green, oblong sepal lobes long and wide and have 57 to 73 stamens. Female flowers are sessile or on a short pedicel with five light green sepal lobes that are narrowly egg-shaped to egg-shaped, long and wide. Female flowers usually have no petals, the ovary is oval and long and wide, and the style is long with three or four spreading pale yellow or red limbs long, each with three to five lobes long. Flowering has been recorded from October to July, and the fruit is an elliptic capsule long and wide with a single oblong light brown to reddeish-brown seed long and wide with a creamy-white caruncle.
Taxonomy Bertya polystigma was first formally described in 1913 by Georg Grüning in Engler's Das Pflanzenreich from specimens collected by Ludwig Diels on Walshs Pyramid.
Distribution and habitat This species of Bertya grows in woodland or forest between the Windsor Tablelands and Ravenshoe in north Queensland.
Conservation status Bertya polystigma is listed as of "least concern" under the Queensland Government Nature Conservation Act 1992.
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