Litsea myristicaefolia (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Litsea myristicaefolia (Wallich ex Nees) Hook.f.

Protologue: Fl. Brit. India 5: 168, 172 (1886).

Vernacular names

• Nutmeg laurel (En)
• Malaysia: medang bunga, medang hitam (Peninsular). Burma (Myanmar): pgu thyn try
• Thailand: trit (Trang), takhrai (Chanthaburi).

Distribution

Peninsular Burma (Myanmar), peninsular Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore.

Uses

The wood is used as medang, e.g. for house building.

Observations

• A medium-sized tree up to 27 m tall, bole up to 60 cm in diameter, with short buttresses up to 1 m high, bark surface smooth to scaly, lenticellate, grey-brown, inner bark reddish.
• Leaves alternate or arranged spirally, 8-20 cm × 3.5-7 cm, blunt or rarely pointed, glabrous, midrib sunken above, with 7-10 pairs of secondary veins which are faint or sunken above, tertiary venation reticulate, inconspicuous on both surfaces, petiole 1.3-3 cm long.
• Flowers in clustered umbellules on c. 1.5 cm long peduncles, with 6 tepals and 10-12 stamens.
• Fruit globose, c. 1 cm across, the lower part covered by an obpyriform perianth cup.

L. myristicaefolia is fairly common in lowland to montane forest, up to 1200 m altitude. The density of the wood is 390-585 kg/m³at 15% moisture content.

Selected sources

78, 140, 245, 316, 529, 705.