Leptecophylla
Prostrate to erect shrubs or small trees; branchlets glabrous to pubescent. Leaves petiolate, suberect, usually discolorous, lower surface with few-many, usually unbranched subparallel-palmate veins, apex usually pungent. Flowers effectively unisexual, solitary in the leaf axils or terminal, each flower subtended by 2 keeled bracts and numerous imbricate bracteols; corolla 5-partite, usually campanulate, glabrous or hairy internally; lobes triangular, valvate in bud, spreading; stamens 5, alternating with corolla lobes; anthers narrow-oblong, enclosed in or slightly exserted from corolla tube; filaments slender, adnate to corolla tube; nectary annular, or in distinct scales; ovary usually glabrous, 5–7-locular with 1 ovule per locule, style usually glabrous, short and below anther level or long and exserted from corolla tube, stigma capitate or lobed. Fruit a drupe, with a pulpy mesocarp and a hard endocarp.
15 species occurring in Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and several Pacific Islands.
Species were previously included in Cyathodes Labill., which has been reclassified to include 3 species that are endemic to Tasmania. Leptecophylla is distinguished from Cyathodes by the shorter, narrower, and pungent tipped-leaves, with petioles that are appressed to the stem; unisexual flowers that have spreading (cf. recurved) corolla lobes, anthers that are not fully exserted from the corolla, and generally fewer carpels (up to 7).
SpinningJarman, S.J.; Kantvilas, G. (2017). Leptecophylla in Tasmania: a reassessment of four species. Swainsona 31: 1–16.
