Nephelium compressum
Content
Description
Leaves 3-5-jugate;
Inflorescence a widely branched terminal or pseudoterminal thyrse.
Sepals free or nearly so, 2-2.2 mm long.
Petals 5, 1.25-1.8 by 1.1-1.4 mm, white, claw 0.3-0.4 mm long, claw and most of the blade outside, and sometimes base of blade inside woolly;
Stamens 7 or 8.
Fruits flattened ellipsoid, 4-4.5 by 2.5 by 1.25-1.75 cm, saccate at the abaxial side, tomentellous, partly glabrescent, rugose-warty;
Distribution
Asia-Tropical: Borneo present, Sarawak, near Kuching present
Malesia: Borneo (Sarawak, near Kuching).
Notes
This species is characterized by its peculiar fruits which appear to be dispersed by water rather than by animals as judged from the thick corky wall and the thin sarcotesta. Vegetatively, however, it is not clearly separable from N. cuspidaturn 'eriopetalum'. The best characters are the slightly bullate leaflets with sunken nerves and usually slightly sunken veins on the upper surface in this species, against the hardly bullate leaflets with narrowly grooved nerves and usually prominulous ve ins in 'eriopetalum'. The flowering collections that are added to the fruiting type on the basis of these characters differ from 'eriopetalum' by the rather large and widely branched, thyrsoid, terminal or pseudoterminal inflorescences (in 'eriopetalum' they are mainly axillary or sometimes even borne on the branch and stem; they consist of a few spike-like branches) and by the nearly free and slightly imbricate sepals and the well developed corolla ('eriopetalum ' has more connate and valvate sepals and lacks, or has only a few, reduced petals).