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Phaleria disperma (Forst. f.) Baill. [ Thymelaeaceae ]

Taxonomy Reports: ITIS | IPNI | IOPI

Samoan Name: Suni
English Name:
Status: Indigenous or perhaps a Polynesian Introduction
Habit: Shrub

Indigenous or perhaps a Polynesian introduction to American Samoa, also found in independent Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, and the Horne Islands. This shrub is now rare in American Samoa, where it is known from only a few coastal locations on three of the islands (one of them an 80 year old record), and is not much more common in independent Samoa. It occurs in littoral and coastal forest, reported from near sea level to 100 m elevation. Suni was probably once widely cultivated in Samoa for its showy, fragrant flowers, but has now fallen into disuse and is now virtually unknown there.

Small tree or shrub up to 6 m in height, with glabrous, somewhat flattened young stems, and a rough black bark with vertical and horizontal ridges and grooves. Leaves simple, opposite, blade coriaceous, elliptic to oblong, 6–13 cm long, acute to subcordate at the base, rounded and shortly acute at the tip; surfaces glabrous, dark above, lower side with aqueous veins; margins entire; petioles stout, red, 4–9 mm long. Inflorescence a terminal, many-flowered (up to 14 flowers), head-like spikes up to 6 cm or more in length. Calyx synsepalous, salverform, petaloid, white, tube 4.2–6 cm long, red at the base, lobes 5, oblong to elliptic, 7–12 mm long, spreading at anthesis, sessile. Corolla absent. Ovary superior, with a long style shorter than the tube, bearing a minutely lobed stigma. Stamens 10, 5 exserted, 5 inserted, episepalous, with yellow anthers. Fruit a red, compressed-subglobose drupe 1.6–2.5 cm long. Flowering and fruiting occur continuously.

Distinguishable by its shrub or small tree habit; opposite leaves; terminal umbels of fragrant, long, white, tubular flowers composed of the petaloid calyx; and a red subglobose drupe.

TUTUILA:
264. Whistler 2848—Between Steps Point and Fagatele Bay?
265. Whistler 3856—Puatauapa Point near Larsens Cove.
266. Whistler 8434—Headland at center of Fogama‘a Cove.
267. Whistler 11121—Just to the west of Fogama‘a Cove.

OFU:
268. Whistler 10361—On southeast quarter of Nu‘utele Islet in coastal forest.

TA‘Ū:
269. Garber 772—Exposed cliff, Si‘ulagi Point, 75 m elevation.

Other Samoan Collections: SAVAII: (3). APOLIMA: (2). MANONO: (2). UPOLU: (14). WITHOUT FURTHER LOCALITY: (2).

Other Collections:

Georeference: -14.315569, -170.701986

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