Carallia brachiata (Lour.) Merr.

Family

Rhizophoraceae

Synonyms

C. integerrima DC., C. lucida Roxb., C. scortechinii King.

Vernacular Names

Geographical Distributions

Madagascar, India, Sri Lanka, Burma (Myanmar), Indo-China, southern China, Thailand, throughout the Malesian region, the Solomon Islands and northern Australia.

Description

Carallia brachiata is a shrubs or small to fairly large trees that can reach up to measure 36(-50) m tall. The bole is measure up to 70 cm in diametre, occasionally with small buttresses (up to 1 m high) and sometimes with small stilt roots or aerial roots at the base. The bark surface is smooth to finely cracking or shallowly to deeply fissured, lenticellate, often hoop-marked and grey to reddish-brown or dark brown in colour. The inner bark is striate, yellowish-brown to pinkish-brown, creamy to yellow-brown sapwood and with prominent rays. The twigs are solid.

The leaves are decussate, simple, elliptical to obovate or narrowly obovate in shape. The margin is entire to dentate or serrate and often with black dots beneath. The stipules are interpetiolar and lance-shaped.

The flowers are in a sessile or peduncled cyme or solitary, bisexual, sessile or stalked and with 2 bracteoles. The sepal is (4-)5-8-lobed. The free petals are 5-8 and clawed. The stamens are twice the number of petals. They are generally free and unequal in length. The disk is annular. The ovary is inferior or semi-inferior and 5-8-locular with 2 ovules in each cell (rarely 1-locular with 10-12 ovules). The stigma is discoid or headed.

The fruit is a 1-celled berry, small, pulpy, crowned by floral remains, 1(-5)-seeded and it is pink to red in colour  when ripe.

The seed is an ellipsoid or kidney-shaped.

Seedling is with epigeal germination. The green cotyledons are leafy. The hypocotyl is elongated. All leaves are arranged opposite.

Ecology / Cultivation

Carallia species occur scattered in lowland to montane forest up to 1800 m altitude. They are found in primary or less often secondary forest, in mixed dipterocarp forest, freshwater swamp forest, kerangas and on hills and ridges, mostly on peat soils or podzolic soils; rarely in savannas.

Line Drawing / Photograph

References

1. Plant Resources of South-East Asia No. 5 (3): Timber trees: Lesser-known timbers.