Do you see a quince or a blood shot eyeball?
This is Australia's Native Quince, or Bird's Eye, a plant of warm temperate and subtropical rainforests. It is 'exceedingly rare' in Victoria - where known only from a single gully near Genoa in the far east - but more common in New South Wales and Queensland. As is warm temperate and subtropical rainforest.
The devastating fires of last summer tore through the gully where this species clings, destroying we think at least half its Victorian population. It is now one of the species we are seed banking and propagating in our Bushfire Plant Rescue and Care Unit, ready for reintroduction if needed.
We already have several planted in our Australian Rainforest border, along Birdwood Avenue, and a few elsewhere in Melbourne Gardens. The one that caught my attention is an old specimen in Hopetoun Lawn, otherwise known for its conifers and oaks.
There are 25 to 36 species in the genus Alectryon, which extends into the Pacific as far as the Philippines. Australia has 16 species, 14 of them, including Alectryon subcinereus, found only in this country. Victoria has a second species, Alectryon oleifolius, on dunes and in floodplains of the dry north-west of the State.
I don't know the history of this specimen, or its age, but it could date back to the early twentieth century at least I think. The New Zealand Oak or Titoki, Alectryon exclesus, is the more commonly planted species of this genus both in Australia and overseas. (We have only one specimen of that species in Melbourne Gardens, in Fern Gully.)
The flowers are small, with a gentle hint of pink, and either male or female. You can see the female flowers here with their protruding ovaries.
The quince connection is through the leaves, which are a little like those of the unrelated edible quince, Cydonia oblonga. In the Native Quince, leaves are often saw-toothed when young (not so much in this specimen) but less so, and more quince-so, when older.
The fruits, however, are not quince-like, and that's where the other commonly used name, Bird's Eye, comes from. In all species of Alectryon, the seed is a shiny black and usually contained within a brightly coloured, rough-textured layer called the aril.
An aril is often nutritious and attractive to animals who might spread the fruit. When the outer layer of the Native Quince or Bird's Eye fruit breaks open, and the seed pops out (as illustrated at the top of this post) it does look like a eye of some kind. If rather blood-shot. In this case birds like and spread the blood-red coated seed.
For humans, the aril of an Alectryon is edible but not particularly pleasant, and the seed itself contains (I gather, and as do many other seeds such as those of the apple) small amounts of cyanide.
You'll also notice a small, aborted fruit to one side of the bird's eye. That's typical of the species and the genus.
Comments
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/71999890
I agree with your hint that wild quince is not a suitable common name. I have a bit of a thing about wildly off-the-mark common names for Australian plants. We common Australians have as much right to invent "common names" as anyone else, and should express the courage of our convictions! Naming Australian plants after some plant that was familiar to our colonial forebears, but has nothing to do with our own plants does suggest a cultural cringe.
How about "quince-leafed birde-eye" as a compromise? It helps the search engine find it under its sillier common name, but links it to the other Alectryons which all have that lovely birds-eye fruit.
Did you know, by the way, that Alectryon means "rooster"? The image you are suppose to see here is a (rather arty) rooster with a red aril, rather than a bloodshot eye.
Trish