Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Deciduous trees up to 25 m tall.

Stems: Bark pale brown, fissured and falling off in large scales from mature trees.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (even-pinnate). Alternate or opposite. Blades oblong–elliptic, slightly falcate, 6–16 cm long, 2–4.5 cm wide, leaflets 3–6 pairs, rachis winged in young leaves. Apex acuminate. Base rounded. Upper surfaces glabrous; lower surfaces moderately tomentose to puberulent, blades chartaceous. Margins entire, slightly undulate. Petioles 3–5 cm long, swollen at base. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in terminal, tomentose panicles to 10–20 cm long. Flowers unisexual (and the plants monoecious), actinomorphic; pedicels 1–3.5 mm long. Calyx of 5 sepals, broadly imbricate, unequal, outer ones ovate, 1.5–1.8 mm long, pubescent at least at base, inner ones suborbicular, ca. 2.5 mm long, pubescent, minutely ciliate. Corolla of 5 petals, with a 2-lobed pilose scale on inner surface at base, subequal, obovate to suborbicular–obovate, strongly concave, ca. 2 mm long, ciliate. Stamens 8, staminal filaments ca. 1 mm long, pubescent at base; anthers ellipsoid, introrse, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, sterile in pistillate flowers. Ovary superior, ovoid, 2–3-celled, glabrous, rudimentary in staminate flowers, 3-lobed in pistillate flowers; ovules 1 per cell; style terminal; stigma 3-lobed, lobes blunt.

Fruit: Fruit of 1(2–3) fleshy; indehiscent schizocarp; globose mericarps 1.7–2 cm long; pericarp coriaceous. Seeds 1 per mericarp; dark reddish brown to black; 1–1.2 cm long; seed coat without a tuft of hairs at base; endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat: Mesic forest.

Elevation Range: 900–1,370 m.