There's always some kind of debate over plant names raging.
There's the perennial issue of whether to use common names or scientific names. Common names are often easier for non-botanists to remember, as they're in a currently spoken language (rather than a weird mix of pseudo-Greek and pseudo-Latin) and often describe some recognisable feature of the plant. Scientific names have the benefit of being unique, and assigned through recognised scientific processes that avoid confusion such as (confusingly) one plant having many common names or (even more confusingly) many different plants having the same common name!
Once you're in the scientific name space, it gets complex quickly, with changes in taxonomic classification meaning plants are regularly assigned new scientific names, or a previously discarded scientific name is reinstated.
The great international Acacia battle, finally resolved in 2005, is one such example, where Australian wattles retained the genus Acacia while plants from other regions got less sought-after names such as Vachellia or Senegalia. You can read more about it in this great article from 2021 by Belinda Smith under the ABC's Science Friction label.
Why am I going on about plant names? Because some plants have interesting or odd names, including the tree I wanted to feature this week. It's Emmenosperma alphitonioides, or Bonewood or Yellow Ash, which is a highly ornamental, though uncommon and rarely grown local tree. Its common names come from two different features of the plant, Bonewood apparently referring to the bone-coloured timber, Yellow Ash apparently to the yellowish tinge of the foliage (though it is often a deep dark green), and the scientific name to features of the species of interest to botanists back when it was first graced with a scientific name. I've never seen the timber and still wonder what 'bone-coloured wood' actually looks like.
This species is relatively straightforward to see in cultivation in the Illawarra region, as there is an outstanding example on Gipps Road in Keiraville, next to the entrance to Nyrang Park. It has the typical conical crown shape of the species, and right now is absolutely covered in orange fruit, which will attract a host of birds. It can also be seen in local rainforest, where it is very adaptable, coping in a range of wet and dry conditions and soil types. Typically it is present as a single tree, mixed in among the many other species of Illawarra rainforests.
The scientific name refers to the fact that the seeds, which are a dark, shiny red, stay attached to the base of the fruit after the valves have fallen away, and that the tree resembles the related group of species known as Alphitonia, which indeed it does. The Illawarra representative of the Alphitonias is Alphitonia excelsa, the Red Ash or Soap Tree (yet more names!!), which I covered in a previous article. Alphitonia and Emmenosperma are in the same family (Rhamnaceae) which helps explain their similarities. Their shiny red seeds are one of many points of similarity. But I'm not in the business of comparing soap with bones. Just watch the local Bonewoods for the moment when the orange fruit split open and the red seeds are clearly visible.
Happy Bonewood spotting!
