Aglaia glabrata
Content
Description
Tree up to 20 m.
Outer bark greyish-brown or reddish-brown with numerous lenticels, sometimes flaking in irregular scales; inner bark pink or pale yellow; sapwood red or pale yellowish-brown, latex white.
Leaves imparipinnate, up to 22 cm long and 20 cm wide; petiole 3.5–7 cm long, petiole, rachis and petiolules densely covered with scales like those on the twigs.
Inflorescence up to 12 cm long and wide; peduncle 1–2 cm, either with scales like those on the twigs or densely covered with reddish–brown or orange–brown scales on the peduncle, rachis and branches.
Flowers (not known whether male or female) 1–1.5 mm long and wide, subglobose; pedicels 0.5–1 mm.
Petals 5.
Staminal tube c. 1 mm long and wide, ob- ovoid, thickened and adpressed against the ovary below the anthers, the aperture 0.5– 0.8 mm in diam. and shallowly lobed; anthers 5, 0.5–0.7 mm long, 0.3–0.5 mm wide, ovoid, inserted below the margin of the tube and protruding to fill or almost fill the aperture.
Fruits c. 1.5 cm long and 1.4 cm wide, subglobose, either densely covered with scales like those on the inflorescence, or with scales which have a dark grey central spot.
Distribution
Asia-Tropical: Borneo present; Malaya (Peninsular Malaysia present); Maluku (Maluku present); Sumatera (Sumatera present)
Malesia: Sumatra, Peninsular Malaysia, Borneo, Moluccas.
Taxonomy
A glaia glabrata appears to have been described from a living plant in the Bogor Botanic Garden; no type specimen has been seen. Some of the specimens collected on Bangka Island (from where the cultivated material originated) and labelled A. glabrata belong to A. malaccensis and others belong to Dysoxylum arborescens (Blume) Miq. This may explain why Miquel (1868) included A. glabrata in ‘species incertae’, at the end of his treatment.
Aglaia glabrata is characterized by having dark purplish–brown peltate scales with a fimbriate margin confined to the midrib on the lower surface of the leaflets. The species resembles Aglaia oligophylla, but the indumentum of the latter is of stellate hairs, not peltate scales. The distal branches of the inflorescence and infructes- cence in herbarium specimens of this species are frequently malformed and appear to be galled.