| Prumnopitys Philippi 1860Common NamesTaxonomic notesSyn: Stachycarpus (Endl.) Tiegh. 1891; Podocarpus sect. Taxoideae Bennett 1838; Podocarpus sect. Stachycarpus Endl. 1847; Podocarpus sect. Prumnopitys (Phillippi) Bertrand 1874; Podocarpus subg. Stachycarpus (Endl.) Engler 1897 (3).Includes two Sections, the type with eight species and and the monotypic Sundacarpus (Buchholz & Gray) de Laub. 1978 (syn: Podocarpus sect. Sundacarpus Buchholz & Gray 1948; Stachycarpus sect. Sundacarpus (Buchholz & Gray) Gaussen 1974) (3). Description"Densely branched dioecious trees to 60 m tall. Bark smooth, fibrous, and reddish to yellowish brown, often darker on the surface but weathering to gray, or older trees breaking off in irregular more or less quadrangular plates 3-5 mm thick and 3-10 cm across, with scattered lenticel-like mounds. Foliage buds small and inconspicuous with overlapping triangular scales. Leaves spirally placed, bifacially flattened, linear, uninerved, without hypoderm, hypostomatic, narrowed at the decurrent base with a twist where the leaf leaves the stem so that the leaves appear distichous. Pollen cones axillary and solitary or grouped on scaly spike (or even compound structures). Seed with its covering solitary and subterminal or grouped along a scaly or leafy shoot, inverted and completely covered by a fleshy epimatium with an apical crest; the seed with a slightly asymmetrical ridge at the micropylar end" (3).RangeThe type section distributed in E Australia, New Caledonia and New Zealand, and from Chile to Venezuela and Costa Rica. Section Sundacarpus is confined to Malesia and Australia: NE Queensland (3).Big TreeOldestDendrochronologyEthnobotany"Several species are important timber trees" (3).ObservationsRemarksCitations(1) Exeter University website.(2) Silba 1986. (3) de Laubenfels 1988. | |
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