Hopea glabrifolia (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Hopea glabrifolia C.T. White

Protologue: Proc. Roy. Soc. Queensl. 43: 49 (1932).

Distribution

Papua New Guinea and the Louisiade Archipelago.

Uses

The timber is used as giam, mainly for wharf and bridge building, window framing, billiard-cue butts and external cladding.

Observations

A medium-sized to large tree of up to 42 m tall, bole cylindrical with a diameter of up to 100 cm and prominent buttresses, bark surface flaky, inner bark green and fibrous, sapwood pale straw-coloured, heartwood brown; young parts and panicle greyish puberulent, glabrescent; leaves lanceolate, 18-19 cm × 2-5.5 cm, falcate, leathery, lustrous, base distinctly unequal, acumen broad, tapering, up to 1.5 cm long, margin narrowly subrevolute, venation scalariform, midrib raised above, secondary veins 9-12 pairs, arched, ascending at 45-50, slender but prominent beneath, narrowly depressed above; stamens 15, ovary ovoid, surmounted by a cylindrical stylopodium twice the length of the ovary and a very short style, glabrous; 2 longer fruit calyx lobes up to 7 cm × 1.3 cm, spatulate, obtuse, 3 shorter ones up to 9 mm × 7 mm, ovate, acute. H. glabrifolia is locally abundant in semi-evergreen seasonal forest up to 350 m altitude.

Selected sources

258, 359, 735, 748.