Palaquium xanthochymum (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Palaquium xanthochymum (de Vriese) Pierre ex Burck

Protologue: Ann. Jard. Bot. Buitenzorg 5: 30 (1886).

• Croixia xanthochyma (de Vriese) Baehni (1965).

• Indonesia: nyatoh renggong (Bangka), nyatu ringkau, nyatu bawui (Kalimantan)
• Malaysia: nyatoh kabu, nyatoh babi, nyatoh baya (Peninsular).

Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Sumatra, the Riau Archipelago, Lingga, Bangka, Java, Borneo (Kalimantan) and the Philippines (Luzon, rare).

The timber is used as nyatoh, for boards, boats and furniture. The seeds yield fat sometimes used for cooking.

• A large tree up to 45 m tall, with bole up to 80 cm in diameter and with buttresses and stilt roots.
• Leaves evenly distributed or loosely clustered at tip of twigs, obovate to spatulate, with inconspicuous, laxly reticulate to transverse tertiary venation, glabrous or sometimes puberulous beneath, drying reddish.
• Flowers in 3-7-flowered clusters, borne on 3-12 mm long pedicels (up to 22 mm in fruit), white.
• Fruit narrowly ellipsoid, 3-5 cm long, glabrous.

Several varieties have been distinguished, especially in Sumatra, differing in the stipules, length of the pedicels and texture of the leaves.

P. xanthochymum occurs scattered in lowland forest, particularly in freshwater swamps and low hillsides. The timber is fairly light with a density of 460-650 kg/m³at 15% moisture content.

35, 36, 102, 190, 318, 581, 743, 779, 792.

• Palaquium (Timbers)

• R.H.M.J. Lemmens (selection of species)