Bertya Genus

Bertya is a genus of approximately 30 flowering shrubs in the family Euphorbiaceae (order Malpighiales), endemic to Australia. The genus was first formally described in 1845 by the French botanist Jules Émile Planchon, published in William Jackson Hooker's London Journal of Botany, and its name honours the French botanist and horticulturist Count Léonce de Lambertye.

Plants in the genus are typically monoecious shrubs, sometimes sticky or resinous, and either glabrous or covered with woolly, star-shaped (stellate) hairs. The leaves are arranged mostly alternately along the stem, simple, flat or with margins curved downward (recurved to revolute), and are either sessile or carried on a short petiole; stipules are absent. Flowers are borne singly or in small umbel-like clusters in the leaf axils, each subtended by 2–10 persistent bracts. The perianth usually consists of 4–5 petaloid segments. Male flowers carry numerous stamens whose filaments are fused into a central column; female flowers are smaller and narrower, with a 3-locular ovary and three branched styles. The fruit is a capsule, almost always containing a single oblong, smooth seed bearing a creamy-white to yellowish caruncle.

Bertya is distributed across Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria, with further representation in Western Australia. The genus is part of the diverse, largely pantropical spurge family Euphorbiaceae, which also includes rubber trees, poinsettias, and cassava.