Bowenia

The genus Bowenia includes two living and two fossil species of cycads in the family Stangeriaceae, sometimes placed in their own family Boweniaceae.[1] They are entirely restricted to Australia. The two living species occur in Queensland. B. spectabilis grows in warm, wet, tropical rainforests, on protected slopes and near streams, primarily in the lowlands of the Wet Tropics Bioregion. However, it has a local form with serrate pinna margins that grows in rainforest, Acacia-dominated transition forest, and also Casuarina-dominated sclerophyll forest on the Atherton Tableland, where it is subject to periodic bushfire. B. serrulata grows in sclerophyll forest and transition forest close to the Tropic of Capricorn.[2][3][4]

Bowenia
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Division: Cycadophyta
Class: Cycadopsida
Order: Cycadales
Family: Stangeriaceae
Subfamily: Bowenioideae
Pilger
Genus: Bowenia
Hook. ex Hook.f.
Species

† Bowenia eocenica
† Bowenia papillosa
Bowenia serrulata
Bowenia spectabilis

Species
ImageScientific nameDistribution
Bowenia serrulata Chamb.Queensland
Bowenia spectabilis HookQueensland


The fossil species Bowenia eocenica is known from deposits in a coal mine in Victoria, Australia, and B. papillosa is known from deposits in New South Wales. Both fossils are of Eocene age, and consist of leaflet fragments.[5]

Bowenia spectabilis in the Daintree Rainforest in northeast Queensland, Australia
Bowenia Lake Tinaroo form in sclerophyll woodland near Lake Tinaroo, Atherton Tableland, far north Queensland
Serrulate margin of the pinnae on a wild plant of Bowenia Lake Tinaroo form, at Lake Tinaroo, Atherton Tableland, Queensland, Australia
Bowenia Lake Tinaroo form in sclerophyll woodland near Lake Tinaroo, Atherton Tableland, far north Queensland
Bowenia serrulata growing in transition forest near Byfield, in the Capricornia region of Queensland, Australia
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References
  1. Stevenson, Dennis William. 1981. American Journal of Botany 68: 1114
  2. Kew World Checklist of Selected Plant Families
  3. Hill, K.D. & Stevenson, D.W. (1999). A world list of Cycads, 1999. Excelsa 19: 67–72.
  4. Christenhusz, M. J. M., J. L. Reveal, A. K. Farjon, M. F. Gardner, R. R. Mill & M. W. Chase. 2011. A new classification and linear sequence of extant gymnosperms. Phytotaxa 19: 55–70.
  5. Hill, R.S. 1978. Two new species of Bowenia Hook, ex Hook, f. from the Eocene of eastern Australia. Australian Journal of Botany 26(6) 837–846.
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