Dysoxylum stellatopuberulum
Content
Description
Tree to 40 m, but at higher altitudes much less and flowering when young; bole to 80 cm diam.; buttresses to 1.8 m tall, 70 cm out, 3 cm thick.
Bark smooth to longitudinally fissured with somewhat recurved flakes, brown; inner bark whitish;
Leaves 25–35 cm, imparipinnate, 3- or 4-jugate, the apical leaflet sometimes lost; a pair of substipular proximal leaflets or their scars sometimes present; petiole 5–9 cm, 2–3 mm diam., angled or at least flattened or grooved adaxially in sicco, ± stellatepubescent, base swollen.
Inflorescences spikes to 3 cm (female) or basally branched panicles to 7 cm, appearing as fascicles of up to 4 sparsely branched panicles, these secondary branches to 1.5 cm, axillary or in axils of cicatrices on twigs to 1.5 cm diam. ± stellate-pubescent; bracts lanceolate, 2–3 mm long; pedicels 0–2 mm.
Petals 5, 12–17 by 3.5 mm, oblong-obtuse, imbricate, weakly connate to staminal tube, ± densely stellate-sericeous without, cream.
Staminal tube glabrous or adpressed sericeous (the trichomes simple) at base without margin crenulate; anthers (9) 10, c. 2 mm long, linear-oblong, basally attached, the apices scarcely exserted, glabrous.
Ovary densely strigose, 5-locular, each locule 2-ovulate; style densely strigose in proximal 2/3; stylehead short-cylindrical to subdiscoid, its flanks scalloped by anther impressions.
Capsule to at least 5.5 cm diam., spherical to subpyriform, 5-sutured, densely minutely stellate-tomentose, with scattered larger stellate hairs, particulary around persistent style, brown.
Seeds 3 cm long and diam., trigonal.
Distribution
Asia-Tropical, Geelvink Bay present, Irian Jaya: Vogelkop present, Jayapura; Papua New Guinea: Central Province present
MalesiaNew Guinea (Irian Jaya: Vogelkop, Geelvink Bay, Jayapura; Papua New Guinea: Central Province)
Morphology
I have not seen mature ovaries or good seeds, the only adequate fruiting collection known to me, BW 9108 (L), having completely empty fruits. This phenomenon is not uncommon in Canarium (Burseraceae, Leenhouts).
This is the only species of Dysoxylum with stellate hairs, which are known elsewhere in the Malesian members of the tribe in sect. Rhetinosperma of Chisocheton. Those are readily distinguished from this species by their pseudogemmulae and larger thyrsoid inflorescences. The sporadic occurrence of stellate hairs is also found in Aphanamixis, forms of A. polystachya being the only ones with them in the genus.
I have reduced Dysoxylum hirtum with its rather hairy morphology and Didymocheton carrii with its rather coriaceous leaves to Dysoxylum stellatopuberulum as there are intermediate specimens.