English Lao
Botanical descriptions Habitat and ecology Distribution
| Diagnostic characters : | Deciduous trees with fissured bark. Leaves simple deeply lobed. Stipules linear, free or adnate to petiole. Flowers unisexual on the same tree. Fruit a globose head of capsules, seeds winged. |
| Habit : | Deciduous tree up to 20 m tall. |
| Trunk & bark : | Bole straight, bark grey-black, fissured. |
| Branches and branchlets or twigs : | Twigs terete, glabrous. |
| Exudates : | Exudate absent. |
| Leaves : | Leaves simple, alternate, spiral, deeply lobed in 3 sections. Primary veins 3, secondary veins obtuse, tertiary veins reticulate. Stipules linear, free or adnate to petiole, deciduous. |
| Inflorescences or flowers : | Flowers unisexual on the same tree, arranged in a many-flowered inflorescence, terminal. Female head-like on a long peduncle, male head-like on spike-like inflorescence with a short peduncle. Pedicels up to 3 mm long. |
| Fruits : | Fruits aggregated in globose heads up to 3 cm in diameter, formed by many coalescent capsules, spiny, woody. |
| Seeds : | Seed 1 winged. |