Botanical name Alectryon subcinereus
Common name Wild Quince
Seedling
Alectyron subcinereus seedlings have a quite distinctive pair of seedling leaves or dicotyledon, changing to a juvenile form after the dicotyledon.
Young plant
The two plants shown below were both found as young seedlings, at the 2 leaf stage, just their dicotyledons. A. subcenereus seedlings are unmistakeable. The first pair of leaves look rather like miniature oak leaves.
Young Wild Quince here always get protection from Wallabies by caging them up until they are over 1.5 metres tall. Any shorter and they get bent over and munched, the trunk is not strong enough to resist a Wallaby.
Juvenile
Reasonably mature
The trunk on Alectryon subcinereus is quite distinctive, having both raised rings and being fluted. When it is wet it becomes a beautiful glossy black, indeed that's one of the reasons I had a little trouble identifying it in the early days. "I've got this tree with beautiful glossy black trunk, do you know what that might be Peter?"
Given good conditions they can grow quite rapidly. Siblings on the same ridge system in better soil and a damper less exposed situation would be double the height and bushier at about 3 years. The plants here are about 2.5 metres tall.
The leaves are thin but moderately stiff to touch, not leathery.
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