大果藤黄 da guo teng huang

Trees ca. 20 m tall. Bark thick, corky; branchlets obtusely 4-angled or subterete, striate, lenticellate, glabrous. Petiole 2-2.5 cm; leaf blade oblong, obovate, or oblong-lanceolate, (12-)15-25(-28) × 7-12 cm, papery, midvein robust, raised abaxially, somewhat impressed adaxially; secondary veins regular, oblique, 9-14 pairs, near margin arching and joining together; tertiary veins nearly parallel, almost inconspicuous, base cuneate, margin conspicuously narrowly involute, apex usually rounded, rarely obtusely acuminate. Plant dioecious, flowers 4-merous. Male flowers 8-12 in an erect 8-15 cm paniculiform cyme; peduncle 3-6 cm; pedicels robust, 3-7 cm; sepals broadly ovate or suborbicular, thick, fleshy, margin membranous; petals yellow, oblong-lanceolate, 7-8 mm; stamen fascicles connate in capitate ring ca. 3 mm high, anthers sessile, or a few near pistillode with short filaments, anthers 2-celled, cells longitudinally dehiscent; pistillode columnar-cuneate, slightly angular; stigma peltate, inconspicuously tuberculate. Female flowers usually in pairs or solitary at apex of branchlet; pedicels robust, slightly tetragonous, with 2 suborbicular bracts at base; staminodes basally united, surrounding ovary, 80-100, upper parts free; ovary subglobose, 8-10-loculed; stigma radiate, 8-10-lobed, papillate. Fruit yellow, large, oblate, concave on both ends when mature, 10-18 × 11-20 cm, smooth; fruiting pedicel 5-6 cm. Seeds 8-10, reniform. Fl. Aug-Dec, fr. Dec-Jan.

Humid dense forests on hills; 200-400(-1500) m. SE Xizang (Mêdog), W Yunnan (Ruili, Yingjiang) [N Bangladesh (sometimes cultivated), NE India (Assam)].

The fruit is edible.

This species is characterized by its long, robust peduncle and pedicel, large fruit, and by the plant exuding barely any yellow resin wherever cut. The Chinese plant (G. D. Tao 17879, Expedition for Drugs 6862) has 90-100 staminodes in the female flower. It is somewhat different from the descriptions of Anderson (in Hooker, Fl. Brit. India 1: 264. 1874) and Pierre (Fl. Forest. Cochinch. 1: xxiv, t. 79, M. 1883). We think it may be a local variant.