English Lao
Botanical descriptions Habitat and ecology Distribution
| Diagnostic characters : | Trees with copious white exudate. Leaves with 3-5 main veins, glaucous below. Petiole long, reddish with two red kidney shaped glands at the top. Flowers pale yellow, unisexual on the same plant. Fruit a capsule. |
| Habit : | Deciduous or evergreen small tree up to 15 m high, 25 cm in diameter. |
| Trunk & bark : | Trunk straight. Bark smooth, lenticellate and pustular, black. |
| Branches and branchlets or twigs : | Twig terete, glabrous, lenticellate, reddish, blackish when dry. |
| Exudates : | Not observed. |
| Leaves : | Leaves simple, alternate and spiral, 9-16 by 8.5-14.5 cm, ovate, 3 lobed blade, apex acute, base rounded, margin entire, blade papery, glabrous with two hanging cup shaped glands at the junction of the lamina and petiole, glaucous below. Young leaves greenish – pale red, nerves light green. Midrib raised above, 5 basal veins, palmate, secondary veins pinnate and oblique to the midrib, widely parallel and open near margin, tertiary veins oblique. Petiole 6.5-7.5 cm long, glabrous, reddish at base and on upper surface. Stipules caducous leaving scar at petiole base. |
| Inflorescences or flowers : | Flowers white, reddish-brown in the centre, very fragrant, grouped in terminal panicle of compound cymes. Female flower smaller than male flower. Pedicels longuer than 0.5 cm. |
| Fruits : | Fruit is a capsule, smooth, glabrous, subglobose, 3 by 4 cm with longitudinal grooves and ridges. . |
| Seeds : | 5 seeds. |