Gluta papuana (PROSEA)
Introduction |
Gluta papuana Ding Hou
- Protologue: Blumea 24: 14 (1978).
Vernacular names
- Papua New Guinea: hekakoro.
Distribution
New Guinea.
Uses
The timber has been especially used for the keels of canoes and for carving and is also used for light construction, furniture, interior finish, corbels, sleepers and mouldings.
Observations
A medium-sized tree up to 31 m tall, with bole up to 50 cm in diameter, buttresses occasionally present and then steep and up to 3 m high, bark surface smooth and scaly, greyish-brown to dark red; leaves elliptical, broadly elliptical or obovate-oblong, 7-20.5 cm × 3-10.5 cm, rounded to slightly emarginate at apex, rarely cuspidate, glabrous, with 12-17 pairs of secondary veins, petiole up to 25 mm long; flowers with irregularly bursting calyx, petals 6.5-7.5 mm long, white, torus cylindrical, c. 1 mm long, stamens 5(-6), ovary glabrous; fruit subreniform, up to 8 cm × 5 cm, pale to dark brown or bluish-black, smooth, with an obscure stalk, without enlarged petals; cotyledons incompletely fused. G. papuana occurs in the lowland, in seasonally inundated forest along rivers, in freshwater swamps, but also in forest on well-drained soils, and secondary forest. The heartwood is thin and reddish-brown; the density is about 520 kg/m3at 12% moisture content.
Selected sources
145, 162, 166, 246, 660.