© 2008 Board of the Botanic Gardens & State Herbarium, Government of South Australia J. Adelaide Bot. Gard. 22 (2008) 67–71 © 2008 Department for Environment & Heritage, Government of South Australia A key to Aglaia (Meliaceae) in Australia, with a description of a new species, A. cooperae, from Cape York Peninsula, Queensland Caroline M. Pannell Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3RB, United Kingdom E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract An introduction and a key to the 12 species of Aglaia Lour. known from mainland Australia are presented. Aglaia cooperae, endemic to vine thicket on sand on Silver Plains in the Cape York Peninsula of Queensland, is described as new, illustrated and named after the author and naturalist, Wendy Cooper. Introduction The small or tiny flowers are complex in structure and The genus Aglaia Lour., with 120 species currently highly perfumed, especially in male plants. All species recognised, is the largest in the family Meliaceae. It have a fleshy aril. This usually completely surrounds the occurs in Indomalesia, Australasia and the Western seed, but in A. elaeagnoidea from the Kimberley region, Pacific, from India to Samoa and from southwest China it is vestigial and the pericarp is fleshy. The fruits or to northern Australia (Pannell 1992). Twelve species arillate seeds are eaten, and the cleaned seeds dispersed, of these small to medium sized, dioecious, tropical trees have been recorded in northern and north-eastern tropical Australia, mainly on the eastern side of the far north of Queensland, where four or five species are endemic, but also in Kimberley, Arnhem, Carpentaria, Burdekin and Dawson.