Aglaia parviflora
Content
Description
Tree up to 20 m high.
Outer bark yellowish- brown or pale greyish-brown, with scattered lenticels; inner bark pinkish-brown, sapwood pale yellowish-brown, becoming pinker inwards; white latex.
Leaves 28–95 cm long, 22–62 cm wide; petiole 5–19(–28) cm long, petiole, rachis and petiolules with numerous to densely covered with scales like those on the twigs.
Inflorescence 10–31 (–39) cm long, 6–20(–24) cm wide, peduncle 0.5–6 cm, peduncle, rachis and branches with numerous scales like those on the twigs and some stellate scales increasing in frequency distally.
Petals 5.
Staminal tube cup–shaped, 0.5–1 mm long with a wide aperture 0.4–0.6 mm across, the margin shallowly lobed and sometimes ciliate; anthers 5, broad, about 1/4 to the same length as the tube, usually inserted just below the margin protruding and pointing towards the centre of the flower, sometimes inserted lower down in the staminal tube and included, usually with simple white hairs on the inside of the tube and on the anthers, sometimes densely clumped and visible in the aperture of the staminal tube; stigma obconical, the apex flattened and the margin raised and lobed.
Fruits 2–2.5 cm long, 1.5–2 cm wide, obovoid or ellipsoid, dull brown or orange- brown, indehiscent.
Seed with aril c. 14 cm long, 1 cm wide and 0.7 cm through; surrounded by a translucent, white, gelatinous aril.
Distribution
Asia-Tropical: Maluku (Maluku present); New Guinea present, New Britain present, Solomon Islands present
Solomon Islands; Malesia: Moluccas, New Guinea, New Britain
Taxonomy
The indumentum of A. parviflora is similar to that of A. saltatorum A.C. Smith (Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, Wallis Island, Tonga and introduced to Niue Island), but it differs in flower structure. These two species are apparently geographically sepa- rated; A. parviflora is not recorded from the Santa Cruz Islands, while this is the only part of the Solomon Islands where A. saltatorum occurs.
Aglaia parviflora sometimes resembles A. sapindina, but it lacks the dark purplish-brown peltate scales on the midrib on the lower surface of the leaflets. The flower of A. parviflora has a subglobose staminal tube, the anthers are hairy, half to three quarters the length of the tube and just protruding; the stigma is obconical, horizontally com- pressed, with a broad, flattened apex and lobed edge.