Hopea vesquei (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Hopea vesquei Heim

Protologue: Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Paris 2: 971 (1891).

Vernacular names

• Brunei: selangan bukit
• Malaysia: selangan bukit (Sarawak), selangan daun kecil, luis tebal (Sabah).

Distribution

North-western Borneo.

Uses

The timber is used as merawan, but is of minor importance.

Observations

• A medium-sized tree of up to 30 m tall, bole straight, cylindrical or sometimes cracked and fluted, with a diameter of up to 35 cm and thin buttresses, exuding white opaque dammar, bark surface patchily cracked, rust-brown and grey mottled, inner bark pale red-brown to cream at the cambium, sapwood yellow, heartwood medium hard, olive-brown; young parts more or less caducous grey-brown puberulent.
• Leaves broadly ovate, 3.5-6 cm × 1.5-3.5 cm, leathery, base cuneate to obtuse, acumen slender, up to 1 cm long, venation dryobalanoid, midrib slightly raised above, secondary veins about 10-13 pairs, slender, hardly raised, with shorter veins in between.
• Stamens 15, the inner 5 taller than the other ones, ovary ovoid, glabrous, style about 1.5 times the length of the ovary, columnar.
• 2 longer fruit calyx lobes up to 3.4 cm × 0.8 cm, sparsely setose in the basal half, 3 shorter ones up to 4 mm × 4 mm, ovate, saccate.

H. vesquei is locally abundant on leached yellow sandy soils in mixed dipterocarp forest on coastal hills. The density of the wood is 680-735 kg/m³ at 15% moisture content.

Selected sources

31, 89, 100, 258, 476, 748.

Main genus page

• Hopea (merawan)

Authors

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