Guettarda speciosa

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Family Rubiaceae

Taxonomy: Guettarda speciosa L.

Synonyms: 2 (APC 2026-07-30)

Guttarda speciosa K.A.W.Williams (orthographic variant)
Matthiola speciosa (L.) Kuntze (nomenclatural synonym)

Distribution (APC): CoI, ChI, AR, NT, Qld

Profiles: APC, Flora of Australia, ALA, iNaturalist, NT eFlora, ATRP

Traits

Top source datasets: ATRP_2020 (1), Brock_1993 (11), Cooper_2013 (11), Crowley_2007 (2), Gross_2005 (4), Kew_2019_1 (1), Kew_2019_3 (3), Kooyman_2011 (9), Nano_2011 (2), RussellSmith_2012 (4), Sjostrom_2006 (4), Wenk_2022 (2), Wenk_2023 (1), eFLOWER_Dun_2022 (18). See below for a full list of sources.
Summary: AusTraits contains 44 traits from 73 records in 14 datasets.

Traits by category (click to expand). For categorical traits, the values are listed. For numerical traits, the mean and range are shown.

fire response

resprouting_capacity (categorical): fire_killed (1); partial_resprouting (1); resprouts (1) [sources: Crowley_2007; Nano_2011; RussellSmith_2012]

flower morphology

flower_colour (categorical): white_cream (1) [sources: eFLOWER_Dun_2022]
sex_type (categorical): hermaphrodite (2) [sources: Gross_2005; Sjostrom_2006]

fruit morphology

fruit_length (numerical): 25 mm (15-35 mm) [sources: Cooper_2013]
fruit_width (numerical): 22.5 mm (15-30 mm) [sources: Cooper_2013]
fruit_type (categorical): drupe (3) [sources: Cooper_2013; Gross_2005; Sjostrom_2006]
fruit_fleshiness (categorical): fleshy (3) [sources: Cooper_2013; Gross_2005; Sjostrom_2006]
fruit_dehiscence (categorical): indehiscent (3) [sources: Cooper_2013; Gross_2005; Sjostrom_2006]

leaf morphology

leaf_length (numerical): 175 mm (100-250 mm) [sources: Brock_1993]
leaf_width (numerical): 155 mm (70-240 mm) [sources: Brock_1993]
leaf_shape (categorical): elliptical (1) [sources: Brock_1993]
leaf_lobation (categorical): unlobed (1) [sources: Kooyman_2011]
leaf_compoundness (categorical): simple (2) [sources: Brock_1993; Kooyman_2011]

life history

photosynthetic_pathway (categorical): c3 (1) [sources: Kew_2019_3]
plant_growth_form (categorical): tree (5) [sources: ATRP_2020; Brock_1993; Cooper_2013; Kooyman_2011; Wenk_2022]
life_history (categorical): perennial (2) [sources: Brock_1993; Wenk_2023]
woodiness_detailed (categorical): woody (1) [sources: Wenk_2022]
leaf_phenology (categorical): deciduous (2) [sources: Brock_1993; Kooyman_2011]
flowering_time (categorical): yyynyyyyyyyy (1) [sources: Cooper_2013]
seedbank_longevity_class (categorical): persistent (1) [sources: RussellSmith_2012]
bud_bank_location (categorical): basal_stem_buds (2); epicormic_buds (2) [sources: Crowley_2007; Nano_2011]

seed morphology

seed_dry_mass (numerical): 881.41 mg (881.41-881.41 mg) [sources: Kew_2019_1]
seed_length (numerical): 15 mm (10-20 mm) [sources: Kooyman_2011]
seed_width (numerical): 16 mm (10-22 mm) [sources: Kooyman_2011]

whole plant morphology

plant_height (numerical): 12.17 m (3-16 m) [sources: Brock_1993; Cooper_2013; Kooyman_2011]

Sources

dataset_id	n_traits	n_records	reference
eFLOWER_Dun_2022	15	18	L. Dun and H. Sauquet. “Unpublished: Floral traits for GAP taxa, University of New South Wales, Australia”. 2022.
Brock_1993	8	11	J. Brock and A. Dunlop. Native plants of northern Australia. Reed New Holland, 1993. ISBN: 9781877069246.
Cooper_2013	9	11	W. Cooper and W. T. Cooper. Australian rainforest fruits. CSIRO Publishing, 2013, p. 272.
Kooyman_2011	7	9	R. Kooyman, M. Rossetto, W. Cornwell, and M. Westoby. “Phylogenetic tests of community assembly across regional to continental scales in tropical and subtropical rain forests”. Global Ecology and Biogeography 20 (2011), pp. 707-716. doi: 10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00641.x.
Gross_2005	4	4	C. L. Gross. “A comparison of the sexual systems in the trees from the Australian tropics with other tropical biomes-more monoecy but why?”. American Journal of Botany 92.6 (2005), pp. 907-919. doi: 10.3732/ajb.92.6.907.
RussellSmith_2012	4	4	J. Russell-Smith, M. R. Gardener, C. Brock, K. Brennan, C. P. Yates, and B. Grace. “Fire persistence traits can be used to predict vegetation response to changing fire regimes at expansive landscape scales - an Australian example”. Journal of Biogeography 39 (2012), pp. 1657-1668. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2012.02714.x.
Sjostrom_2006	4	4	A. Sjöström and C. L. Gross. “Life-history characters and phylogeny are correlated with extinction risk in the Australian angiosperms”. Journal of Biogeography 33.2 (2006), pp. 271-290. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2005.01393.x.
Kew_2019_3	3	3	Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. Salt and water tolerance data from the Seed Information Database (SID) and Seed Bank Database. 2019. url: http://data.kew.org/sid/.
Crowley_2007	2	2	G. Crowley, M. Gardener, and M. Marrinan. Tropical savannas fire response database. 2007. url: [www.landmanager.org.au](www.landmanager.org.au).
Nano_2011	2	2	C. E. M. Nano and P. J. Clarke. “How do drought and fire influence the patterns of resprouting in Australian deserts?”. Plant Ecology 212 (2011), pp. 2095-2110. doi: 10.1007/s11258-011-9988-x.
Wenk_2022	2	2	E. Wenk. “Unpublished data: Australian plant growth forms dataset”. 2022.
ATRP_2020	1	1	F. A. Zich, B. P. Hyland, T. Whiffin, and R. A. Kerrigan. Australian Tropical Rainforest Plants, Edition 8. 2020. url: https://apps.lucidcentral.org/rainforest/text/intro/index.html.
Kew_2019_1	1	1	Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. Seed Information Database (SID) and Seed Bank Database. 2019. url: http://data.kew.org/sid/.
Wenk_2023	1	1	E. Wenk. “Unpublished data: Australian plant life history dataset, University of New South Wales, Sydney”. 2023.