Endiandra montana, commonly known as brown walnut or montane walnut, is a species of plant in the family Lauraceae, first described in 1933. It is a large rainforest tree native to New Guinea and northeast Queensland, Australia, and has a conservation status of least concern.
Description Endiandra montana is a buttressed tree growing up to tall with a trunk up to diameter. The young twigs are fluted and finely hairy but soon become hairless. Leaves are glossy green, arranged alternately or in opposite pairs, and are generally about long and wide. The midrib is flush with the upper surface and there are between 6 and 14 pairs of secondary veins branching from it. The petiole averages about long and domatia are absent.
Inflorescences take the form of a raceme and grow from the . The cream or yellowish flowers are very fragrant. They have six tepals in two whorls, each about long. The six are about long, the ovary is about long.
The fruit is a to ellipsoid drupe, yellow, orange or red, and measuring up to long and wide. It contains a single brown ellipsoid seed up to long and wide.
Distribution and habitat In Australia, it inhabits rainforest on various soil types along the coast and adjacent ranges from the Cooktown area, south to about Cardwell, and up to about above sea level. In New Guinea, there are two records of collections, one each in Papua New Guinea and Western New Guinea.
Taxonomy The species was first described by botanist Cyril Tenison White in 1933, based on material collected in north Queensland by Sethrick Francis Kajewski, an Australian plant collector who had been engaged by the Arnold Arboretum to collect specimens from the Pacific islands. White published the name in the book Ligneous plants collected for the Arnold Arboretum in North Queensland by S. F. Kajewski in 1929.
Conservation This species was assessed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2018 and found to be of least concern. It is also rated as least concern by the Queensland Government under its Nature Conservation Act. In its statement, the IUCN cites the lack of any perceived threat to the species, as well as a wide distribution and large population, as the basis for the assessment.
Ecology Fruit are eaten by cassowaries, king parrots, pied imperial pigeons and musky rat-kangaroos.
References
External links
Information about this species at the Atlas of Living Australia Observations of this species on iNaturalist