Hedraianthera

Hedraianthera is a genus of a sole recognised species of shrubs or small trees found only in Australia. The genus and species constitutes part of the Bittersweet plant family Celastraceae.

The species Hedraianthera porphyropetala grows naturally in eastern Australia in littoral or sub-tropical rainforest north from Ballina, New South Wales to Cooktown in tropical north eastern Queensland. They grow in gullies or rocky slopes on shallow soils, sometimes enhanced by basalt.

The generic name Hedraianthera is from Greek, it refers to the flower anthers without stalks. The specific epithet porphyropetala is also from Greek, it alludes to the attractive deep purple coloured flowers, although the species definition includes plants which have different coloured flowers such as green. They are an unusually southern example of ramiflory.

Previously several publications provided informal scientific descriptions of another species under the provisional scientific name Hedraianthera sp. Mossman (V.K.Moriarty 2557) Qld Herbarium. In a 2012 published Celastraceae genetics study this provisionally named species was reassigned to the genus Brassiantha and formally scientifically described under the new name Brassiantha hedraiantheroides, after its likeness to Hedraianthera. Though still relatively closely related the two species were found to be constitutive of different genera. H. porphyropetala here, again became the only known species in this genus and now Brassiantha constituted not only by the one, but instead by only the two known species, this forementioned B. hedraiantheroides and the New Guinean B. pentamera. B. hedraiantheroides grows naturally only (endemic) in a restricted area of the wet tropics region of north eastern Queensland, Australia. It grows as an understory shrub or small tree in rainforests and sclerophyll forests, from an altitudinal range near sea level to 600 m (2,000 ft).