Phaleria octandra
species of flowering plant
Phaleria octandra, commonly known as dwarf Phaleria, is a species of plant in the family Thymelaeaceae, native to Indonesia, New Guinea and northern Australia. It is a rainforest shrub that was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1767, and it has the conservation status of least concern.
Description
This is a shrub growing to about 2 or 3 m (6 ft 7 in or 9 ft 10 in) tall. It has elliptic leaves measuring up to 20 cm (7.9 in) long and 7 cm (2.8 in) wide, which are arranged in opposite pairs on the twigs. White scented flowers appear from November to February, followed in March and April by globular, shiny red fruit about 1.5 cm (0.59 in) long.
Distribution and habitat
The westerly limit of Phaleria octandra's native range is the Indonesian island of Java, then eastward through the Lesser Sunda Islands, Maluku Islands, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and south into the Northern Territory and Queensland in Australia. It is found as far south as Sarina, Queensland.
It inhabits mature rainforest on a variety of soils. In Australia it occurs up to about 800 m (2,600 ft) in altitude.
Taxonomy
The species was first described in 1767 by Carl Linnaeus, who gave it the name Dais octandra.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Phaleria octandra” as species of flowering plant. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of flowering plant. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7180287. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1767.
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This entry incorporates text from “Phaleria octandra” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.