Billardiera mutabilis
Salisb.Slender climber, young stems villous, becoming glabrescent. Leaves sessile, narrowly elliptic to ovate, thin-textured, 18–80 mm long, 3–18 mm wide, variably pubescent; margins plain to undulate but hardly recurved. Flowers solitary (rarely paired or in 3s) in upper axils or terminal; pedicels slender, 12–45 mm long, extending in fruit, pendant; sepals lanceolate, 4–9 mm long, sparsely pilose to villous; corolla glabrous, 12–23 mm long, campanulate, with acute to acuminate lobes free to the base, slightly recurved near tips, yellow-green, tinged bluish with age; stamens and style usually c. half as long as corolla; ovary glabrous, rarely pubescent. Berry plump, c. 1–2 cm long, glabrous, rarely moderate to sparsely pubescent, green or yellowish; seeds broadly cylindric, flattened or plano-convex, 2–3 mm long. Flowers mainly Sep.–Jan.
Wim, GleP, Brid, VVP, VRiv, GipP, OtP, WaP, Gold, CVU, GGr, DunT, NIS, EGL, EGU, WPro, HSF, HNF, OtR, Strz, MonT, HFE, VAlp. Also SA, Qld, NSW, ACT. Common in heathland, woodland and forests from near sea-level to the subalps.
This species is closely associated with Billardiera scandens, and the distinction between the two species is often unclear (see note under B. scandens). Bentham included the glabrous-fruited B. mutabilis in a broadly defined B. scandens, a species that had previously been described with pubescent fruits. However, in doing so, Bentham also assigned densely villous-fruited plants into B. scandens var. brachyantha (F.Muell. ex Klatt) Benth. Hence the name B. scandens var. scandens has widely been applied to glabrous-fruited plants in Victoria. These two taxa are now recognised at species rank, with glabrous-fruited plants put back into B. mutabilis, and villous-fruited plants (previously in B. scandens var. brachyantha) are retained in B. scandens.
The berry is edible.
Walsh, N.G.; Albrecht, D.E. (1996). Pittosporaceae. In: Walsh, N.G.; Entwisle, T.J., Flora of Victoria Vol. 3, Dicotyledons Winteraceae to Myrtaceae, pp. 526–539. Inkata Press, Melbourne.
SpinningMisapplications
Cayzer, L.W.; Crisp, M.D.; Telford, I.R.H. (2004). Cladistic analysis and revision of Billardiera (Pittosporaceae). Australian Systematic Botany 17(1): 83–125.
