Matayba opaca
Content
Description
Small tree or shrub 2-8 m tall (20 m fide Tillet 43919). Stems glabrous or puberulent, becoming lenticellate with age. Leaves paripinnate; petiole plus rachis 4-20 cm long, striate, glabrous or puberulent; petiolules 3-5 mm long, conical, usually drying blackish; leaflets (2)4-7, alternate, coriaceous or nearly so, glabrous or minutely puberulent along the midvein, oblanceolate, obovate, or less often elliptic, 2-14 (24) × 2.2-6.5 cm, the base slightly unequal, acute or acuminate, the apex obtuse or rounded and sometimes retuse, the margins entire, revolute; abaxial surface with strongly prominent midvein and slightly prominent secondaries, tertiary veins reticulate. Thyrses axillary, to 20 cm long, paniculate; axes puberulent to appressed-pubescent, slightly striate. Flowers in compound, sessile or shortly pedunculate, dichasia; pedicels 1-2 mm long, pubescent. Calyx cup-shaped, pubescent, ca. 0.8 mm long, the lobes ovate, ca. 5 mm long; petals white, elliptic-lanceolate, < 1 mm long, obtuse at apex, lanose; appendages 2, lanose, obovate, slightly longer than the petal, basal-marginal; disc puberulent, 8-lobed, annular; stamens 8, 1.5- 2 mm long, the filaments wooly-pubescent throughout most of their extension; ovary puberulent, pistil elongated, unbranched. Capsule long-stipitate (the stipe ca. 5 mm long), tricoccate or asymmetrically triccocate, ca. 1 cm long, apiculate at apex, glabrous, with crustose, thin pericarp, endocarp glabrous. Seeds black, shiny, ellipsoid, ca. 1 cm long, completely covered by a white thin arillode.