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« Last post by Ellocot on Today at 02:47:43 AM »
I don't know about the other species from Australia, but Idiospermum australiense was almost logged into extinction. Technically the current species may be a different species or whatever, unlike the first discovered specimens.
The others, were widely found in another rainforest of sorts. And overlogged.
And this species in particular is very interesting.
Sure, you have some living fossil families / genera and the like in Japan. Katsura trees have two species in their genus, after that there's a family. And that's it. Species on other continents went extinct.
There's also a few conifers and other things in single families found there.
Gingko bilboa exists. As dies the much cooler Amborella trichopoda. Plus redwoods.
Idiospermum australiense, is similar to things like Lindera benzoin, Magnolia macrophylla, Asimina triloba, Amorphophallus konjac, Asarum canadense, Liriodendron tulipifera and some other species. There's also the North American Skunk cabbages, both of which have Asian species in the same genera that can freely hybridize with them, if I remember correctly.
The flowers attract swarms of flies, and beetles. Sometimes bugs and things use their seeds for some purposes, save for Asimina species and things like Cherimoya.
Asimina species flowers can go from a small bad smelling red flower that attracts beetles, to large white flowers and things that resemble Magnolias and smell sweet.
Idiospermum australiense, is found in the Calycanthaceae. Idiospermum is the only known living species in its genus. Chimonanthus is another genus - all of its species are found in Asia.
Calycanthus, is the third family.
Three species are in North America. One in Asia.
The Asian species, doesn't smell fragrant and it has white flowers.
Calycanthus occidentalis, and Calycanthus floridus are known to be quite fragrant.
Similar to Liriodendron, there is an Asian and North American species - other lineages died out.
These also attract insects.
Idiospermum, is of larger interest to scientists than those other genera. For one, it hasn't changed much in fossil records. It's flowers and things look the same.
Also, no living species appears to consume the seed. Similar to the Osage Orange, they drop to the ground and then get dispersed by water or grow at the base of the tree.
Unlike Osage Orange, cattle tend to die after consuming these. Not even cassowary touch them.
Many of these listed species, pollinated by flies and things - they prefer to outcross. But they're having issues with dispersal. North American Magnolias, most seed dispersers are chipmunks. They just break the seed and consume it immediately without burying it.
This leads to less diversity and yeah. Bottlenecking.
Pawpaws are eaten by bears - they're fine. As are some other species.
Many of these are in the Magnoliids order. Which is semi interesting, since many lines diverged and did similar things.
But anyways. Then you have Idiospermum australiense, which just isn't eaten by anything, but insects love it.
Animals don't destroy the seed, it still makes large stands which helps with diversity.
There are other interesting things about the species.
Regardless, you'd need to contact a government official or someone who lives near these forests, to collect seed.
These aren't protected themselves, even though they've lost most of their range and are likely endangered.
But, they're mostly found inside of protected locations, meaning you can't mess around with anything in the areas that they're currently found in.
It's possible that some trees have escaped the forests, or that they're found in smaller locations nearby.
Many Australian species can grow in areas that experience brief frosts, so these would make great specimen trees.
Apologies about the other stuff. This species is quite interesting to me.
Solanum lycocarpum, the wolf apple is something that you wouldn't think is eaten by a canine but it is. Seeing these large toxic fruits makes me think that maybe animals ate these for a similar purpose at some point in time.
Another rather interesting Australian species, which is hard to find and on the same "you may need to goto Australia to get seed" is Solanum plastisexum.
Anyways, I hope you find this seed. It also has the largest embryo of any living plant. And it has multiple cotyledons in its fruit. As mentioned online, pretty much all other flowering plants have one or two cotyledons.
The large round nuts that you'll find online, are the seeds. They're nuts by the time they fall from the trees. It's hard to say what animal would've found something like this, especially with it being toxic and large, to be appealing as a food - and disperse it around.
Maybe giant chipmunks grabbed them and stored them or something.
Very cool plant species. If you're still looking for the species, good luck. Some botanic gardens may have these growing as well.
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