Flora of New Zealand Series

silky oak

Tree to c. 15 m tall, with dark greyish bark. Shoots and lvs reddish brown-tomentose when young, soon becoming grey. Lvs pinnate and fern-like, to c. 30 cm long (including petiole 2-6 cm long); rachis and petiole greyish tomentose with some reddish brown hairs; pinnae (8)-12- c. 20 cm long, deep green and glabrate on upper surface, with greyish white appressed tomentum on lower surface (sparsely hairy and green in juvenile stage), entire and linear to lanceolate or pinnatisect with 1-4 narrow to broadly triangular lobes (narrower in juvenile lvs); apex of entire pinnae and lobes of pinnatisect pinnae acute or mucronate. Infl. a secund, racemose panicle, 10-16 cm long, glabrous except for lower part of rachis. Pedicels 1.3-2 cm long, filiform. Perianth 9-12 mm long, orange or yellow-orange; limb ± ellipsoid, soon revolute under tube. Nectary lobed. Ovary glabrous; stipe c. 3 mm long. Style c. 2 cm long, with a small somewhat oblique cone at apex. Fr. 1.5-2 cm long, very oblique. Seed winged all round.

N.: known from a single population of young trees originating from a nearby cultivated tree, Mt Richmond (Otahuhu, Auckland).

Coastal S. Queensland and N. N.S.W. 1988

Rough pasture on scoria of volcanic cone.

FL Oct-Jan.

Silky oak is commonly cultivated in warmer parts of the North Id, and sometimes elsewhere, and is valued as an ornamental flowering tree. It has been planted for timber in tropical Polynesia where it also has a tendency to become naturalised. Of the many Grevillea spp. and hybrids cultivated in N.Z., this is the only one which forms a large tree, occasionally to 30 m high in cultivation.