Elaeocarpus holopetalus

Elaeocarpus holopetalus is a shrub or small tree typically growing to a height of , although there are rare specimens are up to tall and wide at the base. The trunk is straight with relatively smooth dark grey or brown outer bark with some fissures and wrinkles. Young branchlets are densely covered with woolly-brownish or velvety hairs. The leaves are lance-shaped to elliptic, or egg-shaped with the narrower end towards the base, mostly long and wide on a petiole long. The leaves are mid to dark green above, paler below and the edges have regular teeth. The flowers are pendent and arranged in racemes long with up to seven flowers on softly-hairy, robust pedicels long. The flowers have five narrow triangular sepals about and wide, densely hairy on the back. The five petals are white, sometimes flushed with pink, about long and wide, the tips sometimes with shallow lobes. There are between fifteen and twenty stamens. Flowering occurs in November and December and the fruit is an oval, maroon drupe turning blackish and long when mature. ==Taxonomy==

Elaeocarpus holopetalus was first formally described in 1861 by Ferdinand von Mueller in Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae. ==Distribution and habitat==

Black olive berry grows in and near the edges of cooler rainforest at altitudes up to from near Dorrigo, Ebor and Chaelundi National Park in northern New South Wales to East Gippsland in north-eastern Victoria. ==Gallery==

Image:Elaeocarpus holopetalus - Leura pool.jpg|Blue Mountains National Park Image:Elaeocarpus holopetalus - Leura tree.JPG|Blue Mountains National Park Image:Blue Mountains Stream with leaves of Elaeocarpus holopetalus & Atherosperma moschatum.jpg|A mountain stream with orange/red senescent leaves of E. holopetalus, southern sassafras and Blue Mountains ash Image:Elaeocarpus holopetalus hemiepiphyte Devils Creek Tantawangalo.jpg|Black olive berry growing as a hemiepiphyte on a soft tree fern at Devil's Creek, South East Forest National Park Image:Elaeocarpus holopetalus & Atherosperma - Brown Mountain.jpg|E. holopetalus (left) and southern sassafras (right) near Nimmitabel ==References==