The podocarps are characteristic of the Antarctic flora, which evolved in the cool, humid southern portion of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana. Gondwana broke apart between 110 and 30 million years ago into the continents of South America, Australia, Africa, India, and Antarctica, along with several large islands. New Caledonia is an ancient fragment of Gondwana, and is rich in podocarp species. Fiji is much younger geologically, and was not part of any continent; Acmopyle must have reached Fiji from across the sea.
Reference
de Laubenfels, David J. 1972. No. 4, Gymnospermes, in A. Aubréville and Jean-F. Leroy, eds., Flore de la Nouvelle-Calédonie et Dépendances. Paris: Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle.
Vidakovic, Mirko. 1991. Conifers: morphology and variation. Translated from Croatian by Maja Soljan. Croatia: Graficki Zavod Hrvatske.
Buchholz describes Acmopyle alba, among other characters, that the pollen cones are larger 18-20 mm long by 3 mm in diameter, in contrast to Acmopyle pancheri 10-20 mm long by 2.3 mm in diameter.
Acmopyle pancheri is dispersed in the ombrophilous, humid forests throughout the main island from sea level to 1200 m above sea level.
Recent studies: Research on the hydrodynamics of pollination and the ontogeny of Acmopyle pancheri: http://rbge/web/science/research/systematics/acmopyle.jsp.
Acmopyle pancheri is one of only two species in its genus, and is endemic to New Caledonia.
We found that Acmopyle had many features of the ‘podocarp’ suite of hydrodynamics characters, such as pollen with functional sacci (‘bladders’) and which floats upwards in a pollination drop.
These include the fact that, in Acmopyle, pollination drop retraction is an active process, not a passive one as in most Podocarpaceae, and starts immediately upon pollination.
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