Callicarpa (PROSEA Timbers)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Callicarpa L.

Protologue: Sp. pl. 1: 111 (1753); Gen. pl., ed. 5: 50 (1754).

Family: Verbenaceae

Chromosome number: x= 8 or 9;C. japonicaThunb.: 2n= 32, 36,C. longifoliaLamk:n= 18,C. macrophyllaVahl: 2n= 34

Vernacular names

• Beauty berry, French mulberry, Malayan lilac (En). Callicarpa (Fr). Brunei: tampang besi
• Indonesia: katumpang (Sundanese), meniran (Javanese), setampo (Sumatra)
• Malaysia: tampang besi (Peninsular)
• Thailand: hu khwai (northern)
• Vietnam: bọt ếch, trứng ốc.

Origin and geographic distribution

Callicarpa comprises about 150 species occurring in North and Central America, the West Indies and in tropical Asia from India and Sri Lanka to Indo-China, China, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, throughout the Malesian region, northern Australia and Polynesia. The highest species diversity and the postulated origin of the genus is located in eastern Malesia.

Uses

The wood of Callicarpa is used for house building, light construction, and for fiddles. It is also applied for fuel. In India the wood of C. tomentosa (L.) Murr. is made into charcoal.

Twigs of C. arborea are used in the Philippines to stupefy fish and as prawn bait; its bark is used as a substitute for betel nut ( Areca catechu L.). Many non-timber-yielding species of Callicarpa have medicinal applications, especially for poulticing.

Production and international trade

Callicarpa wood is used rarely, and only locally.

Properties

Callicarpa yields a lightweight to medium-weight hardwood with a density of 455-510 kg/m³at 15% moisture content, Indian samples are slightly heavier. Heartwood pale yellow-brown turning pale greyish-brown upon exposure, not clearly differentiated from the occasionally slightly paler sapwood; grain straight or interlocked; texture moderately fine and even; wood rather lustrous. Growth rings indistinct sometimes distinct in Indian material; vessels medium-sized, solitary and in radial multiples of 2-3, open; parenchyma sparse, paratracheal occasionally vasicentric; rays very fine to medium-sized, the latter visible to the naked eye; ripple marks absent.

The wood is reported to season poorly. It is moderately soft to moderately hard, moderately strong and is easy to saw and work, but does not finish smoothly. The wood is non-durable.

C. maingayi contains maingayic acid.

See also the table on microscopic wood anatomy.

Botany

Evergreen shrubs or small trees up to 18 m tall; bole up to 60 cm in diameter, without buttresses; bark surface smooth, becoming scaly, grey, inner bark brownish, without exudate. Leaves decussate, but often with 1 or 2 alternate ones between the pairs, simple, margin entire to toothed, lower surface white to brownish-grey woolly or scurfy; stipules absent. Inflorescence axillary or rarely terminal, cymose. Flowers bisexual, small, crowded, subsessile, actinomorphic, 4-5-merous; calyx campanulate or rarely tubular, minutely toothed or sometimes entire; corolla with a short tube, pink, lilac or violet; stamens inserted on the corolla tube, exserted; ovary superior, 2-5-locular with 2 ovules in each cell, style elongate, stigma obscurely lobed. Fruit a small, globose, white, purple or black drupe with a persistent calyx. Seed with scanty or no endosperm. Seedling with epigeal germination; cotyledons emergent; hypocotyl elongated.

Mean annual diameter increment as measured in Indian wood samples of C. arborea is about 1 cm. In Peninsular Malaysia flowering is throughout the year, but in the Philippines C. arborea flowers in June and July. Pollination is by wind or insects; in Peninsular Malaysia C. maingayi is pollinated by carpenter bees ( Xylocopa ). Seed dispersal is probably by birds and small animals that eat the ripe fruits.

The Malesian Callicarpa species are poorly known botanically and in need of a thorough taxonomic revision.

Ecology

Callicarpa occurs scattered in lowland rain forest, up to 1000(-1400) m altitude. Several species are also found in secondary forest or as understorey trees. C. arborea is reported as a pioneer species.

Silviculture Most Callicarpa species can be grown from cuttings.

Genetic resources and breeding

As Callicarpa is botanically poorly known it is difficult at present to assess the conservation of its genetic resources. There are no records of ex situ conservation.

Prospects

It is very unlikely that the wood of Callicarpa will gain importance in the near future.

Literature

46, 56, 163, 209, 235, 267, 364, 436, 464, 648, 653, 812, 861, 874, 1038, 1221.