Parkia sumatrana Miq. - MIMOSACEAE

Synonym : Parkia insignis Kurz
Parkia dongnaiensis Pierre

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Botanical descriptions Habitat and ecology Distribution

Botanical descriptions :

Diagnostic characters : Briefly deciduous or evergreen trees often with small buttresses. Bark smooth with some lenticels. Stipules free. Inflorescence of unisexual and sterile flowers packed in a globose head, sterile ones near the stalk, male in the middle and bisexual at the top. Fruit spirally twisted long pods.
Habit : Briefly deciduous or evergreen tree up to 35 m tall.
Trunk & bark : Bole straight, bark red-brown, smooth with few lenticels, often with small buttresses.
Branches and branchlets or twigs : Twigs terete, glabrous.
Exudates : Exudate absent.
Leaves : Leaves compound, bipinnate, alternate and spiral, leaflets opposite, oblong, apex obtuse or slightly notched, base asymmetrical, margin entire.
Stipules falling off early.
Inflorescences or flowers : Flowers white, arranged in a many-flowered inflorescence, terminal, unisexual, together with sterile ones tightly packed in a globose flower head, on the same tree, pedicels up to 3 mm long.
Fruits : Fruit pods, up to 45 cm long, spirally twisted, splitting open, seeds diagonally arranged across the pods.
Seeds : Seeds many.

Habitat and ecology :

Fairly common in evergreen and deciduous forest.

Distribution :

Burma, Malay Peninsula, Indonesia (Sumatra, Borneo), Thailand, Indochina, Laos (Khammouan).

Remark/notes/uses :
Young seed pods are edible.

Specimens studied :
BT 50, BT 178 (Herbarium of Faculty of Sciences-NUoL, NHN-Leiden and CIRAD-Montpellier).

Literature :
Hoang Van Sam, Khamseng Nanthavong & P.J.A. Keßler. 2004. Trees of Laos and Vietnam. Blumea 49: 201--349.
Gardner S., Sidisunthorn P. & Anusarnsunthorn V. 2000. A field guide to Forest Trees of Northern Thailand. Kobfai Publishing Project. Bangkok. Thailand.

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