White Ramoon

Description

Dioecious tree, to 17 m tall, to 25 cm dbh; trunk with broad, horizontal leaf scars; outer bark thin, sometimes reddish; inner bark thick, granular, tan; glabrous all over or sparsely puberulent on young stems, petioles, leaf veins below, and fruit; sap thin, copious, milky. Leaves alternate; petioles to 1 cm long; stipules lanceolate, lateral, minute, subpersistent; blades mostly oblong--elliptic to obovate, abruptly long-acuminate, rounded to obtuse at base, 7-15 cm long, 2.5-6 cm wide, entire or minutely serrate near apex, slightly asperous above and below. Staminate spikes pendent, 4-6.5 cm long, ca 5-6 mm wide, very densely flowered; tepals 4, broadly oval, to ca 1.7 mm long, densely and minutely pubescent; stamens 4, 2-3 mm long, strongly inflexed in bud; filament elongating, the anther springing free to fling the powdery white pollen into the air; pistillode ca 0.5 mm long. Pistillate spikes densely grayish-velutinous, usually less than 2 cm long, the flowers 4-15 per spike, sessile, ovoid, or conic; perianth minutely 4-lobed at the narrowly opened apex, 2-4.5 mm long; style branches 2, 2-5.5 mm long, long-exserted. Drupes sessile, ovoid to globular, ca 1 cm diam, densely and minutely velutinous, red becoming purple at maturity. Croat 15247, Shat-tuck 1164. Occasional in both the young and the old forests. Seasonal behavior uncertain. Flowers principally from June to August, sometimes as early as April or as late as December, with the fruits maturing from October to December. Allen (1956) reported that the species flowers in February on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. Mexico to Peru and Brazil; Greater Antilles. In Pan-ama, known from tropical moist forest in the Canal Zone, Bocas del Toro, Chiriqui, Veraguas, Panama, and Darien and from premontane moist forest in the Canal Zone.