Antidesma ghaesembilla

The taxa can grow as a shrub or a small tree, from 2 m (6 ft 7 in) up to 20 m (66 ft) high,^[4] in Australia often with a short, poorly-formed trunk/bole.^[5] Dark-coloured bark. Leaves are some 3–7 cm (1.2–2.8 in) by 3–5 cm (1.2–2.0 in) in size (sometimes as short as 2 cm or as long as 16 cm, as narrow as 2 cm and as wide as 9 cm), with curving lateral veins (but these do not form distinct loops inside the margin), oblong blade (occasionally ovate or obovate); pale twig lenticels; pubescent, filiform stipules; tufts of hair/domatia present; leaves dry to olive-green to reddish-green. Its flowers emerge at the axils or on the tip of branches. Male flowers have 4–5 stamens with u-shaped anthers, while female flowers have ovaries covered with soft hairs.^[6] Yellow-green flowers,^[7] some 1mm in diameter with pubescent disc, these are for both male and female flowers. Small fruit, only 4–5 mm long with a persistent calyx that is not disc-like. Seed germination occurs in 28–29 days. There are elliptic cotyledons, some 8 by 5 mm. At tenth leaf stage there are hairy petioles and hairy, filiform stipules (1–2 mm long). In Western Australia, flowering occurs from August to December.^[7] In Thailand, flowering and fruiting is all year round.^[8] In China, flowering is from March to September, while fruiting is from June to December.

Characteristics that help to distinguish the species are: the apex of the leaf is either rounded, retuse or obtuse; free sepals that are pubescent outside; the petiole is 0.7–1 mm wide; the fruiting pedicel is 0–1 mm; male disc consists of free pubescent lobes; the base of the leaf is cordate to rounded, occasionally obtuse; the ovary is pubescent.^[9]

The species is native to an area from northern Australia and New Guinea to tropical and Subtropical Asia, as far as the West Himalaya region and Southeast China.^[2] Countries and regions that it grows in include: Australia ({Queensland: Northeast and Cape York},^[5] Northern Territory, {Western Australia: Kimberley});^[7] Papua Niugini (including Bismarck Archipelago); Indonesia (West Papua, Maluku, Lesser Sunda Islands, Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Jawa, Sumatera); Philippines; Malaysia (Sabah, Sarawak, Peninsular Malaysia); Thailand; Cambodia; Vietnam; China (Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Yunnan); Laos; Myanmar; India (including Andaman Islands, Nicobar Islands, Assam); Bangladesh; East Himalaya; Nepal; Sri Lanka; West Himalaya. The plant is introduced/naturalised in Guyana.^[10]

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In Australia it is found in gallery, monsoon and closed forests, often on heavy soils that experience water-logging during wet season, at elevations from sea level to 600m.^[5] In the Kimberley of Western Australia, it occurs near swamps and watercourses, and in sandstone gorges, growing on alluvial and basalt soils.^[7] On the coast of the Northern Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG), the species grows in wooded patches in grasslands that experience frequent fires, the taxa is fire-resistant.^[11] The plant is characterised as growing in open forest or along the edge of dense forests by the Cambodian botanist Pauline Dy Phon.^[12] In China the species occurs in open scrub and in sparse, deciduous, evergreen or mixed dry forest at 200-1100m altitude.^[4]

The tree is associated with the Northern Australian mushroom Inocybe torresiae Matheny, Bougher & M.D.Barrett. The type specimens grew in a rich black soil of a monsoon forest of A. ghaesembilla and Glochidion disparipes, with other species of tree (Eucalyptus bigalerita, Corymbia bella, and Albizia procera) at a distance.^[13] Generally the mushroom is associated with Northern Australian tropical forests dominated by Allocasuarina, Eucalyptus or Acacia, or near Antidesma and Glochidion with myrtaceous plants at a distance. It is believed that the fungus is more associated, as in these plants being ectomycorrhizal host plants, with the Myrtaceae, but that perhaps they have a wider range of hosts including Phyllanthaceae (the family to which both Antidesma and Glochidion belong).

Within the Fogg Dam Conservation Reserve, Northern Territory, Australia, there are number of plant communities. The eucalypt-dominated mixed forest community contains Exocarpos latifolius and A. ghaesembilla, even though these are more typical of semideciduous monsoon rainforest.^[14]

Around Elsey, Northern Territory, and Roper River, emus like to eat the fruit, allowing hunters to predict their presence.^[15] According to Mangarrayi and Yangman biocultural knowledge, the dowo'min (Mangarrayi)/jowogban (Yangman) (Eudynamys orientalis, koel, a type of cuckoo) looks after the trees (see #Uses below for more on this relationship).

The species grows in the southeast Kimberley (Western Australia) and western Top End (Northern Territory) area of north Australia. Jaru people record it as growing along the banks of rivers and creeks, and that runggu (Fluegga virosa) is considered a "countryman" (individual linked spiritually and physically) to ngujiyi (A. ghaesembilla).^[16]

The tree is a host plant for the fungus Pestalotiopsis rhododendri in Australia and China,^[17][18] and for the sister species tea-pathogen fungus Pestalotiopsis theae in India.^[19] The species is a host of the Phakopsoraceae rust fungus Crossopsora antidesmae-dioicae in New Guinea, Indonesia, Philippines, China and Uganda.^[20] The funguses Aspergillus flavus and Penicillium spp. have been recorded on the seeds of the plant in the Philippines.^[21]

In the savannah country to the west of Port Moresby, Papua Niugini, the plant occurs as a pioneer tree after fire or cultivation, low in height and comparatively short lived.^[22] In northern PNG, at the plains of the Ramu and Markham Valleys, there were cycad savannahs until pasture improvement and cattle changed the lowland megatherm mid-height to tall grassland savanna to predominantly grass with permanent stands of Albizia procera and A. ghaesembilla and occasional Glochidion, Kleinhovia, Macaranga and Mallotus (plant). In the savannah that formerly grew around Port Moresby International Airport, PNG, there were isolated specimens growing in black clay soil along the gullies and creeks.^[23]

In the Tanimbar Archipelago, dry deciduous forest is found on the northeast coast of the main island of Yamdena. This forest has a 30m high canopy dominated by Ebenaceae, Fabaceae, Apocynaceae and Menispermaceae species, with this taxa a minor component of the lower canopy (below emergents and upper canopy, above the lower story (pole) layer).^[24]

The Semayan Village forest (Kutai Kartanegara Regency, east Kalimantan) is a riparian forest dominated by Lophopetalum javanicum, Mitragyna speciosa and Gluta renghas, with this species as a very minor component.^[25]

It is one of the plants that the thrip Dolichothrips reuteri associates with in the Philippines.^[26]

Growing throughout Thailand, this species is usually found in secondary vegetation, on soils that range from dry to inundated, in seasonally-flooded places, mounds in rice field and roadsides.^[8] In the floodplain of the Trang River, Trang Province, southern Thailand, the tree is one of the dominant taxa in the Mitragyna-Lagerstroemia-Glochidion shrubland of old rice fields that were flooded for 3 to 8 months. Dominant taxa are Mitragyna diversifolia, A. ghaesembilla, Phyllanthus subscandens var. subscandens, Leea rubra and Ziziphus oenopolia. The tree also is found in a community growing on the fringe of the floodplain, where inundation is seldom, as well as on termite hills or old semi-permanently-flooded rice fields, the Lagerostroemia-Streblus-Ziziphus shrubland, where the dominant taxa are Lagerstroemia floribunda, Streblus asper, Z. oenopolia, Microcos tomentosa, Melastoma malabathricum and A. ghaesembilla

This taxa is one of the hundreds of hosts of the two fruit fly species Bactrocera carambolae and Bactrocera dorsalis in Southeast Asia.^[27]

The plant is rated as of Least Concern by the IUCN, because the taxa has a very wide distribution with a large population, and it is not currently experiencing or facing major threats.^[1] However, there is a continuing decline of mature individuals and its habitat is continually declining in area, extent and quality. The conservation status of the tree, while of least concern, is of some concern.