Dehaasia
Encyclopedia
Dehaasia is a genus of 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...

 or deciduous
Deciduous
Deciduous means "falling off at maturity" or "tending to fall off", and is typically used in reference to trees or shrubs that lose their leaves seasonally, and to the shedding of other plant structures such as petals after flowering or fruit when ripe...

 trees or shrubs belonging to the Laurel family, 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...

. It is a botanical genus to 53 species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 of flowering plants belonging to the family 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...

. Distributed from continental Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, from India to China, and islands from Borneo, New Guinea, Java, and Indonesia. The genus was described by Carl Ludwig Blume
Carl Ludwig Blume
Charles Ludwig de Blume or Karl Ludwig von Blume was a German-Dutch botanist.He was born at Braunschweig in Germany, but studied at Leiden University and spent his professional life working in the Dutch East Indies and in the Netherlands, where he was Director of the Rijksherbarium at Leiden...

 and published in Rumphi 1: 161 in 1837. (Jun 1837).

Overview

About 35 species in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, with the center of diversity in west Malaysia; three species in China, two endemic.

Dehaasia, Alseodaphne
Alseodaphne
Alseodaphne is a genus of plant in family Lauraceae....

, and Nothaphoebe
Nothaphoebe
Nothaphoebe is a genus of plant in family Lauraceae with about 40 species in East asia, south east Asia, and North America.-Overview:Distribution from China to peninsula Malaysia, Sumatra, Java, Lesser Sunda Islands, Borneo, Philippines. In North America from Texas to south with more species mostly...

 are, morphologically, three closely related but distinct genera near to the Persea
Persea
Persea is a genus of about 150 species of evergreen trees belonging to the laurel family, Lauraceae. The best-known member of the genus is the avocado, P. americana, widely cultivated in subtropical regions for its large, edible fruit.-Overview:...

 subgroup of the Lauraceae. A total of 214 binomials of the three genera have been published by various authors (International Plant Names Index, March 2007), of which 44 have been attributed to species occurring in Borneo.
Despite many attempts by various authors, Rohwer in 1993, and 2000, Van der Werff & Richter 1996, Van der Werff in 2001, to clarify the generic delimitation between these three genera, to date there remains to be no satisfactory solution. The taxonomy of the genus is poorly understood due to their diversity, difficulty in identifying and reduced taxonomic work done on it. Dehaasia are tropical species of very different sizes, morphology, and ecology. Because of the lack of worldwide knowledge about the family Lauraceae in general, very little is known about the genera diversity. The knowledge of this genus to national level, is that to be expected in countries with limited economic means with the vast majority of species indeterminate or even poorly determined. Therefore an increase in the study of genera, at national level, is of utmost importance for the progress of the systematics of the family Lauraceae in general. The increase in the number of species is expected for the genera, bringing an expected considerable increase in the total number of species of the family. The exact relationships among the genera in the family remained unclear.

Description

Shrubs or small hermaphrodite trees, up to 5 m tall. They are bush
Bush
-Nouns:* Shrub, a type of woody plant, smaller than normal trees. Usually grows in the soil. Most bushes are low to the ground and have branches which rise up from the bottom of the plant....

 or 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 of medium size.
Branchlets yellow-white initially but soon grayed, slender, glabrous, warty, lenticellate, with distinctive leaf scars; young ones more or less angled; innovation covered with long and finely appressed hairs. The leaves are alternate. The bark
Bark
Bark is the outermost layers of stems and roots of woody plants. Plants with bark include trees, woody vines and shrubs. Bark refers to all the tissues outside of the vascular cambium and is a nontechnical term. It overlays the wood and consists of the inner bark and the outer bark. The inner...

 is usually white, soft, papery, peels easily, with the xylem
Xylem
Xylem is one of the two types of transport tissue in vascular plants. . The word xylem is derived from the Classical Greek word ξυλον , meaning "wood"; the best-known xylem tissue is wood, though it is found throughout the plant...

 yellow. White twigs, thin and stiff, with visible signs of scarring produced by the leaves. The sheet
Sheet
Sheet may refer to:* A flat piece of cloth, paper, or other material** Bed sheet, a piece of cloth used to cover a mattress** A piece of paper*** Balance sheet, a financial summary of assets and liabilities*** Sheet music, a form of musical notation...

 s are grouped at the apex of the twig: The inflorescence
Inflorescence
An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Strictly, it is the part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed and which is accordingly modified...

 s in tassel
Tassel
A tassel is a finishing feature in fabric decoration. It is a universal ornament that is seen in varying versions in many cultures around the globe.-Etymology:...

 s arm, generally thin with many bracts so few flowers, usually upright and branched at right angles. The fruit
Fruit
In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

 is black and shiny, usually ovoid, rarely globose and the exocarp meaty. Fruit black, shiny, usually ovoid, rarely globose, with fleshy exocarp; fruit stalk generally scarlet or yellow or green, fleshy-dilated, obconical, warty, apex nearly depressed and rarely with persistent perianth lobes. The dispersal of seeds is due to birds that swallow them, so the berries are shaped to attract the birds. The fruits are an important food source for birds.

Selected species

Some names in the repository Global Names Index of uBio:
  • Dehaasia acuminata Koord. & Valeton
  • Dehaasia annamensis Kosterm.
  • Dehaasia assamica Kosterm.
  • Dehaasia borneensis Fern.-Vill.
  • Dehaasia brachybotrys (Merr.) Kosterm.
  • Dehaasia Blume, 1837.
  • Dehaasia caesia Blume.
  • Dehaasia cairocan (Vidal) C.K. Allen.
  • Dehaasia candolleana (Meisn.) Kosterm.
  • Dehaasia celebica Kosterm.
  • Dehaasia chatacea
  • Dehaasia corynantha Kosterm.
  • Dehaasia cuneata

External links

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