Myristica crassipes
Content
Description
Tree 4-30 m.
Leaves membranous, chartaceous, or coriaceous, elliptic-oblong to (oblong-)lanceolate, 7-20 by 2.5-6.5 cm, base attenuate or rounded, apex acute-acuminate, sometimes with blunt tip;
Inflorescences between the older leaves, essentially of the Knema-typt:
Fruits solitary or paired, ovoid or oblong, or ± fusiform, sometimes asymmetrical, 3.5-5.5 by 2-3(-4) cm, apex narrowly rounded, blunt, or (sub)-acute-apiculate, base rounded, pseudostalk absent or broad, to 3 mm, hairs dense, scurfy, 0.1-0.2 mm or less, or wholly or partly (early) glabrescent;
Taxonomy
2 Myristica crassipes has largely the same circumscription here as that adopted by Sinclair (1968: 353), although several specimens now in M. crassipes were named by Sinclair M. longipes, M. gracilipes, and M. cucullata (with the leaves dotted below). Foreman (1978: 190) includedM. firmipes under M. crassipes and Sinclair (I.e.) included some specimens with stalked inflorescences, but their views are not followed here.
4 Sinclair (I.e.) cited and depicted a richly flowering male specimen, Robbins 1155 (CANB, not seen).
3 Myristica crassipes resembles both M. tubiflora and M. laevifolia in general habit (the latter from the same montane habitat), and also M. vinkii. Myristica crassipes also resembles the lowland species M.flosculosa, both in general habit and in the presence of the distinctive warty structure of the inner surface of the basal part of the male perianth, also found in M. pumila, and they seem taxonomically related.
1 The holotype, Bander 50, has been destroyed in B; an isotype in WRSL is a poor specimen. According to Warburg (1. c.) and Markgraf (1. c.) Bamler 50 was collected at c. 700 m, rather low for the species. It has comparatively thin, membranous leaves, but generally it agrees well with the rest of the material seen. Warburg mentioned the fruiting pedicel as conspicuously thick, 8 mm, but in the isotype in WRSL this is only 5 mm thick.