Xerospermum
Content
Description
Medium-sized trees (or shrubs), dioecious.
Branchlets terete, lenticels many, scattered, pustular but usually inconspicuous;
Leaves paripinnate, (unifoliolate to) 1- or 2- (or 3-)jugate, without pseudo-stipules;
Inflorescences usually solitary in the lower leaf axils and tufted in the upper leaf axils;
Flowers actinomorphic, 4- or 5-merous, unisexual.
Sepals free or slightly connate, either all about equal or the outer two slightly smaller, the outer usually with a narrow, the inner with a broad membranous margin to nearly completely membranous.
Petals about equal to or slightly shorter than the sepals, sessile to variably clawed, without a scale, woolly ciliate.
Stamens (7) 8 (9), hardly to distinctly exserted in male flowers;
Fruits with 1 (or 2) lobes developed, in the latter case lobes widely spreading, not winged, the lobes ellipsoid to subglobular, capsular, probably finally loculicidally dehiscent;
Seeds ellipsoid to subglobular, completely covered by a thin sarcotesta except for the basal hilum;
Distribution
Asia-Tropical: Assam (Assam present); Borneo present; Jawa (Jawa present); Malaya (Peninsular Malaysia present); Sumatera (Sumatera present), Bangla Desh present, Burma present, Indochinese Peninsula present
Bangla Desh, Assam, Burma, the Indochinese Peninsula, and Malesia: Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, Borneo. Two species.
Uses
The thin yellow to orange sarcotesta is eaten, but is not of importance. The opinions on the timber quality are rather divergent: fire wood, inferior timber, or a good, tough, and durable timber. See .
Notes
In the older literature there was some confusion regarding the sarcotesta. With , the description reads: "testa. fleshy, pilose, simulating an aril." This became with : "Seeds without arillus, the testa pilose, fleshy outside and arillus-like" (see also ). The mention of the sarcotesta as being pilose is incomprehensible.