Hoheria equitum

Detailed description

Evergreen tree to 8 m tall, more or less glabrous except the young shoots and flower buds which are clad in stellate hairs, bark fibrous, tough, branches slender, sucker shoots frequent. Juvenile foliage similar to adult. Leaves yellow-green, alternate, 35-150 × 15-95 mm, elliptic to broadly elliptic apex obtuse to subacuminate, acumen, where present, often obtuse; young leaves with stellate hairs on undersides, soon glabrescent; margins recurved, entire or distantly and rather obscurely serrate with blunt teeth up to 1-2 mm long, petiole 10-30 mm long, stipules linear, 3.5 × 0.5 mm. Flowers in 1-15-flowered axillary fascicles, these solitary on articulated pedicels 10-20 mm long, bearing few hairs. Flowers hermaphrodite, regular, 10-23 mm across. Epicalyx absent. Calyx rather deeply toothed, lobes 5, 2 × 2 mm, clad in sparse stellate hairs when young, without adaxial glands. Petals 5, white, obtuse, asymmetrical with a notch on one side of the apex, slightly clawed at base. Staminal column adnate to corolla, bearing c.20 stamens in 5 bundles, sparse, stiff hairs present abaxially at base of staminal tube, anthers dark red before dehiscence, fading to pale yellow. Ovary superior, 5-celled, 1.8 × 1.5 mm, with a crown of short hairs at the apex, Ovules pendulous, 1 in each cell. Style branches 5, stigma 0.5 mm wide, capitate or obliquely capitate, not decurrent. Fruit a schizocarp, separating from a central xis into 5, 1-seeded, more or less indehiscent winged Mericarps. Mericarps 4.0-4.8 mm long, semicircular, initially bright green maturing greyish, broader at base, rounded to angular otherwise, wings arising from upper ½ of dorsal surface, ribbed, margins irregularly toothed to somewhat smooth .