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Electronic Flora of South Australia species Fact Sheet

Family: Adoxaceae
Sambucus gaudichaudiana

Citation: DC., Prod. 4:322 (1830).

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: White elder, white elder berry.

Description:
Shrubs with herbaceous branches rarely longer than 1.5 m and soft-wooded towards the base, sparsely scabrous; leaves sessile with basal leaflets smaller, with a second and third pair of leaflets often pinnatipartite; leaflets sessile to subsessile or with a decurrent base, lanceolate to rarely linear-lanceolate or ovate, but margins often asymmetrical, 5-9 x 1.5-2.5 cm (usually 3 or 4 times longer than broad), acuminate or acute, coarsely serrate, glabrescent.

Inflorescence terminal, corymb-like, cymose, much-branched but not always in a dichasial manner; bracts absent, rarely scale-like; calyx lobes 3 or 4, ovate, c. 1 mm long, rounded, glabrous; petals shortly connate, white; lobes oblongovate, 2-3 mm long; stamens 2-5 but rarely more than 3 mature, the anthers about as long as the filaments; ovary usually 3- or 4-celled each with 1 ovule, angled, with 3 short stigmas on a short broad style.

Fruit globular berries, pale-yellow.

image of FSA3_Sambucus_gau.jpg Branch and flower.
Image source: fig. 617a in Jessop J.P. & Toelken H.R. (Ed.) 1986. Flora of South Australia (4th edn).

Published illustration: Cochrane et al. (1968) Flowers and plants of Victoria, t. 218.

Distribution:  In wet usually swampy areas.

S.Aust.: SE.   Qld; N.S.W.; Vic.; Tas.

Conservation status: native

Flowering time: Nov. — Jan.


SA Distribution Map based
on current data relating to
specimens held in the
State Herbarium of South Australia

Biology: The fruits are edible.

Author: Not yet available


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