Dysoxylum setosum
Content
Description
Tree to 30 m, but at high altitudes much less; bole to 50 cm diam.; buttresses to 20 cm tall and 30 cm out.
Bark grey, vertically fissured; inner bark brownish, sometimes with weak white latex; sapwood cream or white;
Leaves 20–75 cm, imparipinnate and less often paripinnate on same tree, or apical leaflet lost, up to 6-jugate, less at high altitudes; petiole 8–20 cm, 3–5 mm diam., terete to flattened adaxially, glabrescent to pubescent or even tomentose.
Flowers sweetly- scented (sweet Compositae, e.g. Helenium, Mabberley).
Petals (4–)5(–6), 7–10 mm long, densely sericeous without, creamy white, waxy, valvate, adnate in up to proximal third to staminal tube.
Staminal tube glabrous to ± pilose, especially at base within, white, with 10(–l2) rather irregular lobes, sometimes emarginate, reflexed at anthesis; anthers 10(–12), c. 2 mm long, oblong, ± included.
Ovary densely pilose, (4- or) 5-locular, each locule 2- ovulate; style pilose in proximal half; stylehead short-cylindrical to subdiscoid.
Capsule to 3 cm long, c. 4 cm diam., ellipsoid to depressed globose, usually rostrate, yellow- brown, cerebriform in sicco with a dense tawny tomentum, usually mixed with paler, deciduous, irritant hairs c. 2 mm long, (4–)5(–6)-locular, each locule with 1 or 2 seeds.
Seeds trigonal, testa orange, with aril enveloping proximal third.
Distribution
Asia-Tropical: New Guinea present, N Queensland present, Timor present
Australia (N Queensland); MalesiaLesser Sunda Islands (Timor), New Guinea
Taxonomy
As Miquel (l.c.) points out, this species links his sections Epicharis and Didymocheton, having the calyx of the first and fruit of the second.
Although confused with specimens referable to Dysoxylum sessile, the type of Epicharis ? setosa is clearly identical with other material from Timor and that of the widespread tree in New Guinea, known as D. magnifolium or D. lactiflorum (which are based on the same Forbes gathering). Dysoxylum cerebriforme, described originally from fruiting specimens, with its hairs of two lengths and its stubby buds, belongs here and not to D. gaudichaudianum (‘D. amooroides’) as proposed by C.T.White, who gave the name D. sericiflorum to the flowering material associated with the fruits by Bailey. Dysoxylum tafaense has the longest bracts, though a wide range of bract size is found in the specimens included here.
Specimens from high altitudes in New Guinea have fewer leaflets, which are coriaceous, and the apical one is often lost before developing. In the highest montane localities in that island, the leaves and inflorescences are densely covered with hairs but the irritant hairs of both the vegetative parts and the fruits typical of some of the lowland specimens are generally absent.