English Lao
Botanical descriptions Habitat and ecology Distribution
| Diagnostic characters : | Evergreen trees, bark fissured to flaky. Leaves paripinnate, alternate, rachis swollen at base, tip continuously growing leaflets 5-10 pairs. Inflorescence axillary, long and pendulous, flowers creamy-white, Fruit a capsule, covered by an aril. |
| Habit : | Evergreen tree up to 5 m. tall, about 10 cm. in diameter. |
| Trunk & bark : | Trunk smooth, greyish, finnely fissured, flaky and lenticellate, outer bark 1 mm. thick red, inner bark c 0.5 cm. thick, soft, light brown, sapwood creamy white. |
| Branches and branchlets or twigs : | Branches terete, hairy when young but glabrous when mature. |
| Exudates : | Exudate absent. |
| Leaves : | Paripinnately compound leaves, alternate, rachis up to 50 cm. long, swollen at base, tip continuously growing; opposite leaflets 5-10 pairs, oblong-elliptic 3-6 x 6-18 cm. in length, asymmetric blade, apex acute to acuminate, base rounded, margin entire; lamina glabrous on both surface but partly hairy when young. The veins prominent below, secondary veins (about 7-10 pairs) oblique widely parallel, tertiary veins obliques. Petiolule swollen, very short or sessile, up to 3 mm. long. Leaves with fern like tip; exstipulate. |
| Inflorescences or flowers : | Inflorescence shorter than leaf, less than 30 cm. axillary panicle. Flowers bisexual, cylindrical tubes, white. Pedicel shorter than 0.5 cm long. |
| Fruits : | Fruit is a thick capsule, rounded about 5 cm. in diameter, thick walled, glabrous. Greenish-brown when young then red, later dehiscent into segments, 2-4 loci. Almost 3 lobes. |
| Seeds : | A few, globose, black partly covered by aril. |