Lansium
Content
Description
Trees to c. 30 m tall, often fluted and buttressed.
Leaves pinnate, the leaflets subopposite to alternate, the most apical on one side appearing ter- minal and usually largest; secondary venation reticulate, conspicuous when dried; petio- lules pulvinate at base; domatia absent.
Inflorescences spikes, racemes or more rarely basally branched panicles with spicate or racemose branches, borne on twigs, branches or bole.
Flowers unisexual (tree dioecious) and bisexual, the latter larger than male ones.
Petals 5, free from each other but united with staminal tube in proximal third to half, imbricate.
Staminal tube globose to cyathiform, margin ± undulate; anthers (8–) 10 in one whorl inside the throat of the tube, their tips not or slightly exserted, without appendages.
Ovary 3–5-locular, each lo- cule with one ovule; style long and broad-columnar, ± slightly expanded at the truncate stylehead, its flanks ribbed with the impressions of the surrounding anthers, pistillode more slender, ovules smaller.
Fruit a 1–5-seeded berry with soft pericarp.
Seed arillate (L. breviracemosum possibly exarillate), the aril thick, fleshy, white, edible, completely enveloping seed; embryo with thick plano-convex, superposed free cotyledons, radicle included.
Distribution
Asia-Tropical, southern Thailand present
Three species, the genus possibly being the only one restricted to Malesia, but planting of L. domesticum, which may be native in southern Thailand in any case, elsewhere has obscured this.
Taxonomy
The venation of the leaflets closely resembles that of many Sapindaceae, no- tably Lepisanthes spp. (see further under Excluded species), and is also seen in Aglaia spp. (particularly A. oligophylla Miq.), Chisocheton lansiifolius Mabb., C. sapindinus Stevens and Dysoxylum rigidum (Ridley) Mabb.