Prunus polystachya
Content
Description
Deciduous trees, up to 35 m high and more than 60 cm diam., sometimes with buttresses, bark grey to black or blackish brown.
Leaves elliptic to elliptic-ovate, 8-26 by 5-15 cm, base rounded to truncate, rarely acute, apex obtuse or shortly acuminate, herbaceous to coriaceous, with 9-12(-14) pairs of nerves, venation inconspicuous, glabrous on both sides, finely pubescent below only when very young, basal glands (0-)2, deeply hollowed, distinctly bulging above, not rarely in the contracted leaf-base.
Stipules narrowly triangular to oblong, oblique, 4-10 by 1.5-3 mm, usually free, rarely shortly intrapetiolarly connate.
Flowers sometimes male, fragrant.
Stamens 50-85, filaments up to 5 mm, glabrous, anthers 0.3-0.7 mm long.
Ovary glabrous except around insertion, or with some long hairs higher up, often on one side only, rarely more densely hairy, style 4-5 mm long, pistillo-dium in male flowers minute.
Fruits transversely ellipsoid, 13-21 by 17-27 mm, exocarp glabrous, remaining green when mature (?), endocarp glabrous inside.
Seed with glabrous or hairy testa.
Distribution
Asia-Tropical: Malaya present (Singapore present); Sumatera (Sumatera present), Borneo? present
Sumatra (only seen from the middle part), Malaya, Singapore, Borneo? (From this island only one collection was seen, viz. For-man & Blewett 946, Brunei; it has the typical large leaves and fruits of this species but deviates in having flat instead of marsupial basal leaf glands).
Ecology
Corner, l. c, records pollination by "crowds of hover-flies and small beedes", attracted by the fragrant flowers. He invented the queer English name "bat's laurel" for the species but the role of bats was not elucidated.