Syzygium griffithii (PROSEA)

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Plant Resources of South-East Asia
Introduction

List of species

Syzygium griffithii (Duthie) Merr. & Perry

Protologue: Mem. Amer. Acad. Arts & Sci. 18: 174 (1939).

Synonyms

Eugenia griffithii Duthie (1878).

Vernacular names

Malaysia: kelat lapis, kelat bising (Peninsular).

Distribution

Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore and Borneo.

Uses

The timber is reputed to be used as kelat. The bark has been used to dye clothes reddish or, after stamping in mud, black.

Observations

A medium-sized to fairly large tree up to 36 m tall, bole up to 70 cm in diameter, buttresses up to 5 m high, bark surface dippled, scaly and flaky, reddish-brown.
Leaves narrowly elliptical to oblong-elliptical, 8-20 cm × 4-9 cm, with c. 15 pairs of secondary veins indistinct above, petiole up to 10 mm long.
Flowers sessile in axillary and terminal racemes or panicles, calyx c. 5 mm long, with 4 unequal and deciduous lobes.
Fruit subglobose, c. 20 mm in diameter, greenish.

S. griffithii closely resembles S. subrufum (King) Masam., but it has shorter inflorescences, smaller leaves and larger flowers. It is widely distributed in lowland and hill forest. The wood is purplish grey-brown; the density is 670-735 kg/m³ at 15% moisture content. See also the table on wood properties.

Selected sources

78, 140, 206, 364, 378, 529, 705.