Hopea griffithii (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Hopea griffithii Kurz

Protologue: Journ. As. Soc. Beng. 42(2): 60 (1873).

Synonyms

• Hancea griffithii (Kurz) Pierre (1891).

Vernacular names

• Indonesia: emang, mang (West Kalimantan)
• Malaysia: merawan jantan, pengerawan bunga (Peninsular), luis jantan (Sarawak).

Distribution

Southern Burma, Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo.

Uses

The wood is used as merawan and is especially suitable for door and window frames, particle board and railway sleepers.

Observations

• A medium-sized to fairly large tree of up to 40 m tall, bole straight, cylindrical, with a diameter of up to 70 cm, thin buttresses and a few stilt roots, exuding a clear dammar drying cream, bark surface smooth, becoming fissured with age, chocolate brown, inner bark pink-brown, becoming paler at the cambium, sapwood cream.
• Leaves ovate to lanceolate, 4-9 cm × 1.7-4.5 cm, leathery, base narrowly or broadly cuneate, acumen slender, up to 1.5 cm long, margin frequently subrevolute, venation dryobalanoid, midrib depressed above, secondary veins about 9 pairs, hardly raised beneath.
• Stamens 15, in 3 unequal verticils, anthers broadly ellipsoid, ovary and stylopodium stoutly pyriform, papillose towards apex, style short, columnar.
• 2 longer fruit calyx lobes up to 3 cm × 0.5 cm, 3 shorter ones up to 8 mm × 1 mm, linear.

H. griffithii is locally common on leached soils in mixed dipterocarp forest on low hills. The density of the wood is 505-835 kg/m³ at 15% moisture content.

Selected sources

31, 258, 359, 557, 628, 677, 748.

Main genus page

• Hopea (merawan)

Authors

• K.M. Kochummen (selection of species),
• F.T. Frietema (selection of species)