Rhyticaryum

Primary tabs

Rhyticaryum

Description

Dioecious shrubs or trees. Leaves spiral, entire, not rarely with sparse appressed (strigose) hairs, midrib raised on both faces, nerves ± markedly looping before the edge. Flowers in axillary spikes, these rarely also composed to panicles in the same specimen, or very rarely reduced to such extent that the (few) flowers seem to be fascicled, small, sessile, each subtended by a small bract. Petals 4 or 5, connate ½ to ¾ their length to a ± open, sometimes campanulate cup, free part or lobes valvate, apex inflexed. Ovary conical to subglobose, densely set with erect hairs; Seed 1, testa thin;

Distribution

Admiralty Is present, Asia-Tropical: Maluku (Maluku present); New Guinea present, Australasia: Queensland (Queensland present), Bismarcks present, Cape York Peninsula present, East Malesia present, Melanesia present, NE. Australia present, New Britain present, New Ireland present, Solomons present
About 12 spp. in all, in NE. Australia (Queensland: Cape York Peninsula) 1 sp., Melanesia (Solomons, Bismarcks: New Britain, New Ireland, Admiralty Is.) 1 sp., and East Malesia: New Guinea and Moluccas, 12 spp. .

Uses

The leaves are locally cooked and eaten by the people as a vegetable.

Notes

Species are rare and still inadequately known and difficult to delimit; several types are lost.

Citation

BECC. 1878: p. 256. – In: Malesia: corr.: Rhyticaryum
SLEUM. 1969 – In: Blumea: 249
K. SCH. & LAUT. 1900: Fl. Schutzgeb.: 415