Cinnadenia is a flowering plant

Flowering plant

The flowering plants , also known as Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants. Angiosperms are seed-producing plants like the gymnosperms and can be distinguished from the gymnosperms by a series of synapomorphies...

 genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 belonging to the family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 Lauraceae

Lauraceae

The Lauraceae or Laurel family comprises a group of flowering plants included in the order Laurales. The family contains about 55 genera and over 3500, perhaps as many as 4000, species world-wide, mostly from warm or tropical regions, especially Southeast Asia and South America...

. They are present in low and mountain cloud forest in South East Asia.

The genus was described by André Joseph Guillaume Henri Kostermans

André Joseph Guillaume Henri Kostermans

Dr. André Joseph Guillaume Henri 'Doc' Kostermans was a botanist. He was born in Purworejo, Java, Dutch East Indies, and educated at Utrecht University, taking his doctoral degree in 1936 with a paper on Surinamese Lauraceae.He spent most of his professional life studying the plants of...

, originally from Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

, and published as Adansonia: Reports Périodique d'observations botanique, ns 13: 223 in 1973. The type species

Type species

In biological nomenclature, a type species is both a concept and a practical system which is used in the classification and nomenclature of animals and plants. The value of a "type species" lies in the fact that it makes clear what is meant by a particular genus name. A type species is the species...

 is Cinnadenia paniculata.

Description

They are tree

Tree

A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...

s up to 40 m high, mostly 30 m high, hermaphrodite

Hermaphrodite

In biology, a hermaphrodite is an organism that has reproductive organs normally associated with both male and female sexes.Many taxonomic groups of animals do not have separate sexes. In these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which both...

s. Some species are slow grow canopy trees. The leaves are alternate, entire, elliptical or narrowly elliptical. 10 to 25 cm longand 3-8 cm wide. Many species have a valuable timber, others have the wood and bark pleasantly scented to the related lauraceae genus Cinnamomum

Cinnamomum

Cinnamomum is a genus of evergreen aromatic trees and shrubs belonging to the Laurel family, Lauraceae. The species of Cinnamomum have aromatic oils in their leaves and bark. The genus contains over 300 species, distributed in tropical and subtropical regions of North America, Central America,...

. The oils extracted are used as ingredients in the manufacture of perfumes.

Ecology

They Grow in evergreen tropical forest. Species in less humid environment are smaller or less robust, with less abundant and thinner foliage and have oleifera cells that give trees a more fragrant aroma. It is present in the Himalayas mountain cloud forest

Cloud forest

A cloud forest, also called a fog forest, is a generally tropical or subtropical evergreen montane moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud cover, usually at the canopy level. Cloud forests often exhibit an abundance of mosses covering the ground and...

 in Bhutan, Atxam, Myanmar, and Vietnam. They grow also in evergreen lowlands tropical laurel forests. They does not form large stands but rather small groups of trees with a density of up to one individual per five hectares.

The ecological requirements of the genus, are those of fog moisture precipitating almost continuously in a natural habitat cloud-covered for much of the year. These genus species are found in tropical forests, subtropical temperate evergreen, montane evergreen forests, which is a type of rainforest

Rainforest

Rainforests are forests characterized by high rainfall, with definitions based on a minimum normal annual rainfall of 1750-2000 mm...

 or Cloud Forest

Cloud forest

A cloud forest, also called a fog forest, is a generally tropical or subtropical evergreen montane moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud cover, usually at the canopy level. Cloud forests often exhibit an abundance of mosses covering the ground and...

. An ecosystem

Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....

 of great exuberance characterized by high humidity, no seasonal changes and with a wide variety of botanical and zoological species but also highly fragile against external aggressions. The temperate evergreen and evergreen forests are typically multispecies with evergreen and hardwood trees, reaching up to 40 meters in height. The forests are made up of laurel-leaved evergreen

Evergreen

In botany, an evergreen plant is a plant that has leaves in all seasons. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which completely lose their foliage during the winter or dry season.There are many different kinds of evergreen plants, both trees and shrubs...

 hardwood

Hardwood

Hardwood is wood from angiosperm trees . It may also be used for those trees themselves: these are usually broad-leaved; in temperate and boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostly evergreen.Hardwood contrasts with softwood...

 tree

Tree

A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...

s, harbouring a rich biota

Biota (ecology)

Biota are the total collection of organisms of a geographic region or a time period, from local geographic scales and instantaneous temporal scales all the way up to whole-planet and whole-timescale spatiotemporal scales. The biota of the Earth lives in the biosphere.-See...

 of understorey plants, invertebrate

Invertebrate

An invertebrate is an animal without a backbone. The group includes 97% of all animal species – all animals except those in the chordate subphylum Vertebrata .Invertebrates form a paraphyletic group...

s, bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

s and mammalians. It is present in tropical and subtropical montane rainforest, laurel forest

Laurel forest

Laurel forest is a subtropical or mild temperate forest, found in areas with high humidity and relatively stable and mild temperatures. They are characterized by tree species with evergreen, glossy, enlongated leaves, known as laurophyll or lauroide...

, in the Weed-tree forests in valleys, mixed forests of coniferous and deciduous broad-leaved trees, Tsuga

Tsuga

Tsuga is a genus of conifers in the family Pinaceae. The common name hemlock is derived from a perceived similarity in the smell of its crushed foliage to that of the unrelated plant poison hemlock....

forests; 2000–2600 m (6,561.7–8,530.2 ) from norther Vietnam, to Himalayas.

In Himalayas and other mountain areas is present in cool temperate zones in montane tropical and subtropical montane rainforest, Cinnadenia require continuously moist soil, and do not tolerate drought.
The laurel trees falls within the broad-leaved forests; mid-montane deciduous forests; and high-montane mixed stunted forests. Some species growing to high altitude forests at 1500–3300 m (4,921.3–10,826.8 ). The upper limit of forests ranges from 3000 metre. Three taxa are commonly found at tree line: an evergreen, needle-leaved gymnosperm (Abies pindrow Spach.), an evergreen, broad-leaved sclerophyllous oak (Quercus semecarpifolia Sm.), and a deciduous, broad-leaved birch (Betula utilis

Betula utilis

Betula utilis is a Birch tree native to the Himalayas, growing at elevations up to . The specific epithet, utilis, refers to the many uses of the different parts of the tree. The white, paper-like bark of the tree was used in ancient times for writing Sanskrit scriptures and texts...

Don).
Vernal flowering is common at this elevation in Central Himalaya. In general, in their elevational distribution and structural-functional attributes, these high altitude forests are similar to other forests of cool temperate zones in Himalaya.

The most known trees are used by the timber industry. The fruit, a berry, is an important food source for birds. In some species the seed dispersal

Seed dispersal

Seed dispersal is the movement or transport of seeds away from the parent plant. Plants have limited mobility and consequently rely upon a variety of dispersal vectors to transport their propagules, including both abiotic and biotic vectors. Seeds can be dispersed away from the parent plant...

 is carried out by monkey

Monkey

A monkey is a primate, either an Old World monkey or a New World monkey. There are about 260 known living species of monkey. Many are arboreal, although there are species that live primarily on the ground, such as baboons. Monkeys are generally considered to be intelligent. Unlike apes, monkeys...

s, chipmunk

Chipmunk

Chipmunks are small striped squirrels native to North America and Asia. They are usually classed either as a single genus with three subgenera, or as three genera.-Etymology and taxonomy:...

s, or fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

es.

Cinnadenia malayana is in the Red List of Threatened Species.

Selected species

• Cinnadenia malayana Kosterm.
• Cinnadenia paniculata Kosterm.