The name refers to the distinctive red-orange (auranticum — a modern, latinised adaptation of orange);
Greek carpos — fruit.
Slender, small trees. Leaves alternate or in whorls, entire or toothed, leathery, stalks conspicuous. Flowers bisexual, massed in flat clusters; cream, sweet-smelling. Sepals 5, free. Petals 5, also free, spreading from the base; summer. Ovary completely bilocular, placentation axile. Fruit massed orangered capsules, distinctively and unequally bilocular, bivalve; seeds few, black, glossy, dry, attached at the centre of each chamber.
6 species from mainly tropical areas in N and NE Australia, preferring basalt outcrops.
Seed (difficult) or softwood cuttings.
Masses of flowers in flat-topped clusters in summer, followed by distinctive orange-red fruits persisting all winter; seeds are black and not sticky.
Cayzer (1997), Cayzer et al. (2000b).
Source: (2002). Pittosporaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 3. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 2. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.
