Author:
Jan Scholten
Book:
Qjurious
Type:
Info
Chapter:
3-655.36.__
Commersonia
Genus: 25 species.
Region: Australia, Southeast Asia, western Pacific Islands.
Taxonomy
A revision of the genus in 2011 added 3 newly described species, as well as 14 species previously included in Rulingia, and transferred a number of species to the newly created genus Androcalva.
. At 25 metres high with a girth of 50 centimetres it is a common garden plant in northern New South Wales and southeastern Queensland and grows on rainforest margins, often as regrowth after logging. Its foliage is very characteristically horizontally layered. Alex Floyd's book, Rainforest Trees of South-eastern Australia, notes its distribution is from the Bellinger River in northern NSW to Cape York and Malaysia. Floyd notes the fibrous bark was used by Australian aborigines to make nets for catching kangaroos and fish.