Hopea pierrei (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Hopea pierrei Hance

Protologue: Journ. Bot. 15: 308 (1876).

• Malaysia: merawan palong (Peninsular)
• Cambodia: kôki:(r) khsach
• Laos: (maiz) kh'èn hin
• Thailand: takhian-rak (general), takhian-sai, khaen-hak-yong
• Vietnam: kiền kiền.

Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, south-eastern Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia and western Sumatra.

The timber is used as merawan (lightweight wood) or as giam (heavy wood). It is valued in Cambodia for construction. In Vietnam the pale yellow dammar is used for torches and for caulking boats and is also used in powder form thrown upon burning charcoal to give a representation of gunfire in theatrical performances.

• A small to medium-sized tree of up to 25 m tall, bole often twisted and of poor shape, with a diameter of up to 50 cm and thin buttresses or stilt roots, bark surface smooth, dark with light patches, inner bark light brown, tinged pink, sapwood pale yellow-brown; twigs fugacious puberulent.
• Leaves lanceolate, 4-8 cm × 1.5-4 cm, thin leathery, base abruptly broadly cuneate, acumen slender, up to 1.2 cm long, venation dryobalanoid, midrib obscurely depressed above, secondary veins about 18 pairs with many, more or less equal veins in between.
• Stamens 15, ovary and stylopodium hour-glass-shaped, equal, tapering into the short style.
• 2 longer fruit calyx lobes up to 27 mm × 7 mm, spatulate, obtuse, 3 shorter ones up to 3 mm × 2 mm, ovate.

H. pierrei occurs in lowland evergreen rain forest on sandy soils or in heath forest in Indo-China up to about 1000 m altitude; in Malaysia on ridges at 300-700 m altitude, sometimes locally gregarious. The density of the wood is 760-1155 kg/m³ at 15% moisture content.

102, 235, 258, 628, 677, 748.

• Hopea (merawan)

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