Rainforest tree named not for Davidson of plum fame
Some plant groups seem to have their stronghold in southern Asia, with a tentative dip into the warm tropics of north-eastern Australia. There origins can be different but they are mostly assumed to relictual in Australia, living in rainforest that once covered larger areas of Australia when it was wetter and hotter in geological time, and less intensively inhabited in more recent times. Davidson's Alder, Spiraeanthemum davidsonii , was first collected from the 'highest crest of Mount Bellenden-Ker', the highest peak in Queensland. Ferdinand von Mueller described it in 1887, in The Australasian Journal of Pharmacy no less. The genus Spiraeanthemum occurs naturally in Papua New Guinea and islands to the east of there, with this one species in growing in Australia, between Mount Spurgeon and Innisfail. Davidson's Alder is quite different to the other species of Spiraeanthemum and was for a time moved into an allied genus, Acshmithia . A molecular study published in
