Eidothea

Eidothea
Eidothea hardeniana
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
(unranked): Angiosperms
(unranked): Eudicots
Order: Proteales
Family: Proteaceae
Subfamily: Proteoideae
Genus: Eidothea
Douglas, AW &
Hyland, BPM (1995)
Type species
Eidothea zoexylocarya
Species

See text.

Eidothea[1] is a genus of two species of rainforest tree in New South Wales and Queensland in eastern Australia, which belongs to the plant family Proteaceae, which also includes more familiar members such as the waratahs, grevilleas, banksias, macadamias and proteas. The genus is named after Eidothea, one of the three daughters of Proteus in Greek Mythology.

Fossil seeds named Xylocaryon lockii by the German-Australian botanist Ferdinand von Mueller in 1883 and found in Miocene age sediments excavated in old gold mining sites in Victoria match those of Eidothea, and are thought to represent the modern plant.[2][3][4]

That Eidothea has been found at localities as far apart as Cairns and Lismore, and as a fossil from much further south, underlines the fact that Australia’s rainforests are tiny remnants of ancient rainforests that covered vast areas of Australia until only a few million years ago. This makes them a particularly precious part of Australia's natural heritage.

Contents

Taxonomy

The Proteaceae is a very old family of flowering plants that probably originated while the ancient supercontinent Gondwana was still in one piece. Gondwana consisted of what are now the continents of Australia, Africa, South America and Antarctica, as well as smaller bits and pieces such as New Zealand, New Caledonia and Madagascar. Gondwana began splitting up over 120 million years ago and the fragments carried a diverse array of plants and animals with them, including a variety of lineages of the Proteaceae. Eidothea is the only relic of one of those early lineages that has barely survived in the rainforests of eastern Australia. Other lineages went on to diversify spectacularly, resulting in hundreds of descendant species.

Eidothea lies within the subfamily Proteoideae, which contain such plants as Protea, Leucadendron, Leucospermum, and most other South African Proteaceae, Isopogon (Australian ‘drumsticks’), Adenanthos (Australian jugflowers), Petrophile (Australian ‘conesticks’), Conospermum (Australian smoke-bushes).

Species

Two living species are known:

Notes

  1. ^ From the name of the Ancient Greek mythological figure Εἰδοθέᾱ, daughter of Proteus.
  2. ^ Mueller, F. von, 1883. Observations on New Vegetable fossils of the Auriferous Drifts. Decade II, Geological Survey of Victoria, Melbourne.
  3. ^ Douglas, A.W. & Hyland, B. (1995) Subfamily 3. Eidotheoideae. Flora of Australia Vol. 16: 127–129.(ABRS/CSIRO Publishing: Melbourne).
  4. ^ Greenwood, D.R., A.J. Vadala, and J.G. Douglas. 2000. Victorian Paleogene and Neogene macrofloras: a conspectus. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria 112(1): 65-92.

References