English Lao
Botanical descriptions Habitat and ecology Distribution
| Diagnostic characters : | Evergreen trees, trunk with shield shaped leaf scars. Exudate watery becoming gum-like, pinkish-red. Twigs angled. Leaves glaucous below, base peltate, margin with glands. Flowers unisexual on different trees. Fruit a capsule, seeds black with orange aril. |
| Habit : | Evergreen tree up to 18 m tall. |
| Trunk & bark : | Bole straight, often tapering, bark pale grey, smooth, with U-shaped ridges and shield -shaped leaf scars. |
| Branches and branchlets or twigs : | Twigs angled and ridged, glabrous or covered with minute hairs. |
| Exudates : | Exudate watery, becoming gum-like, pinkish-red. |
| Leaves : | Leaves simple, alternate and spiral, below densely red-brown hairy, becoming glabrous or with minute hairs and yellow dots, glaucous, broadly ovate to almost round, apex acuminate, base peltate, margin entire or shallowly toothed with glands at the end of the teeth. Primary vein 3-5, radiating, secondary veins obtuse, tertiary veins oblique. Stipules present, narrow, falling off early. |
| Inflorescences or flowers : | Flowers arranged in a many-flowered inflorescence, axillary, or just below the leaves, unisexual, on different trees, pedicels up to 3 mm long. |
| Fruits : | Fruit up to 0.8 cm long, capsule splitting into 2 sections, with sticky yellow powder from glandular scales outside. |
| Seeds : | Seeds 2, black with thin orange aril. |