Sindora galedupa (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Sindora galedupa Prain

Protologue: Journ. As. Soc. Beng. 66: 483 (1897).

Family: Leguminosae

Synonyms

• Galedupa indica Lam.,
• Pahudia galedupa Backer ex K.Heyne.

Vernacular names

• Indonesia: kayu galadupa (South Sulawesi), kayu gowa, ai kowa (Moluccas, Seram), mobingo (Sulawesi).

Distribution

Indonesia (Lesser Sunda Islands, Sulawesi, Moluccas).

Uses

After the bark of S. galedupa has been pounded, the tree exudes a black, sticky balsam, which after a long time hardens to a hard resin. Although itself not very aromatic, this balsam (the basis for the "dupa" of the Makassarese people), served to stick together other wood and resin parts and to strengthen their aroma. The timber is possibly used like sepetir, a medium-heavy hardwood from Sindora species.

Observations

• Tree, up to 25 m tall.
• Leaves alternate, compound, usually 4-jugate; petiole up to 3 cm long, rachis 8-14 cm long; leaflets elliptical to ovate or obovate, 4-13 cm × 3-7 cm, base usually unequally sided, apex acute to obtuse, thinly leathery, puberulous beneath when young but glabrescent.
• Inflorescence paniculate, up to 17(-37) cm long.
• Flowers dirty yellow or light brown, fragrant; calyx lobes lanceolate, about 1 cm long, densely puberulous, but with a glabrous margin and lacking spines; petals about 6 mm long; stamens 9 (2 fertile, 7 sterile) and 1 staminode.
• Fruit a flattened, suborbicular to ellipsoidal pod, 6-10 cm × 5 cm, at almost a right angle on a fruit stalk 1 cm long, smooth and without spines, with a very short beak, 1-2-seeded.
• Seed suborbicular to broadly ellipsoidal, about 2 cm × 1.8 cm, compressed, with a small aril.

S. galedupa grows in forest and on forest edges from sea-level to 120 m altitude. It flowers in April-July and fruits in April-December. Not much is known about this species.

Selected sources

186. timbers

11, 18, 23. exudates