Commersonia bartramia

Commersonia bartramia, known as brown kurrajong, is a flowering plant in the Malvaceae family native to Southeast Asia, Northern Territory, Queensland, and New South Wales. It grows as a tree or shrub, reaching up to 25 meters in height with a trunk diameter of up to 50 cm and sometimes developing buttress roots. The leaves are heart-shaped to egg-shaped, measuring 50–140 mm long and 10–20 mm wide, with hairy petioles 10–30 mm long and stipules at the base. They often have fine teeth on the edges and are paler beneath.

The flowers appear in dense clusters from October to March, each cluster varying between 20 to over 100 flowers on peduncles 5–25 mm long. Each flower has a short pedicel, white sepals and petals of similar length, and staminodes between stamens. The fruit is a hairy dark capsule about 15–25 mm long.

Originally described as Muntingia bartramia by Carl Linnaeus in 1759, it was renamed Commersonia bartramia by Elmer Merrill in 1917, honoring botanist John Bartram. This species thrives in rainforests and along creeks near forest edges, commonly found in regrowth areas from southern China to the Bellinger River in New South Wales.