Mangifera gedebe (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Mangifera gedebe Miq.

Protologue: Fl. Ind. Bat., Suppl. 1(3): 522 (1861).

Family: Anacardiaceae

• Mangifera camptosperma Pierre (1897),
• Mangifera reba Pierre (1897),
• Mangifera inocarpoides Merr. & Perry (1941).

• Indonesia: kedepir (Sumatra, West Java), gedepir, gedeperan (Sumatra), kepi, repeh (East Kalimantan)
• Malaysia: gedepiak (Peninsular). Burma (Myanmar): thayet pya, thy-ni
• Cambodia: reba, riba, svaay mi√´hs
• Thailand: kadupae, mamuang-pan (peninsular)
• Vietnam: xoài bui, quéo.

Southern Burma (Myanmar), Indo-China, peninsular Thailand, northern Peninsular Malaysia (rare), Sumatra, western Java, eastern Kalimantan, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Sometimes cultivated.

The wood is reputed to be used. The fruits are only edible when unripe and are very sour; the pulpy part of ripe fruits consists mainly of fibres.

• A medium-sized tree up to 30 m tall, with bole up to 60 cm in diameter, buttresses absent but bole often swollen at the base, bark surface pustular, smooth or cracked to fissured, grey to pale brown.
• Leaves elliptical-oblong, oblong to lanceolate, 5.5-25 cm × 2.5-6 cm, subcoriaceous.
• Inflorescence pseudo-terminal, rather lax and many-flowered, densely minutely puberulous or glabrescent.
• Flowers 4-merous, petals 3-5 mm long, greenish-white, with 3 (or 5) ridges on the inner surface confluent at their bases, disk cushion-like and short, 4-5-lobed, one stamen fertile, staminodes 3-4, short, free.
• Fruit disk-like, rounded, slightly oblique and distinctly compressed, up to 10.5 cm in diameter, pale green or yellowish-green when ripe. Flesh thin, fibrous.
• Seed with inner integument penetrating the cotyledons forming numerous irregular folds.

M. gedebe is the only species with labyrinthine seed; the fruit can be dispersed by water. It occurs in lowland rain forest in marshy places, temporarily inundated locations and along rivers, and is locally gregarious, flowering in June-September, fruiting in August-November. The species is rare and urgently requires conservation in Eastern Borneo. The density of the sapwood is about 520 kg/m³ at 15% moisture content.

• Bompard, J.M. & Kostermans, A.J.G.H., 1985. Wild Mangifera species in Kalimantan, Indonesia. In: Mehra, K.L. & Sastrapradja, S. (Editors): Proceedings of the International Symposium on South East Asian Plant Genetic Resources, 20-24 August 1985, Jakarta. Lembaga Biologi Nasional LIPI, Bogor. pp. 172-174.

• Mukherjee, S.K., 1985. Systematic and ecogeographic studies on crop genepools 1. Mangifera L. IBPGR, Rome. 86 pp.

• van Steenis, C.G.G.J. et al. (Editors), 1950-. Flora Malesiana. Series 1. Vol. 1, 4-10. Centre for Research and Development in Biology, Bogor, Indonesia, and Rijksherbarium, Leiden, the Netherlands. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Boston, London.

162, 328, 474, 673. timbers

P.C.M. Jansen, J. Jukema, L.P.A. Oyen, T.G. van Lingen