Garcinia mangostana, Linnaeus, 1753

Nazre, M., Newman, M. F., Pennington, R. T. & Middleton, D. J., 2018, Taxonomic Revision of Garcinia Section Garcinia (Clusiaceae), Phytotaxa 373 (1), pp. 1-52 : 31

7. Garcinia mangostana L. (1753: 443)

≡ Mangostana garcinia Gaertner (1790: 105). Lectotype (designated by Hammel in Jarvis et al. 1993: 28):—[icon]: “Mangoustan”, Garcin (1733: tab. 1).

Tree to 30 m tall. Bole with pale cream or brown to dark brown, smooth, scaly and flaking bark; inner bark reddish brown to pink or red-brown to light brown. Exudate yellow. Twigs clearly 4-angled, stout, roughly wrinkled longitudinally when dry, deep dark yellowish-brown or pale brown. Petiole stout, finely transversely striate, angled, to 3 cm long. Lamina thickly leathery, sometimes shiny on the upper surface, pale brown above and reddish-brown below when dry, elliptic to broadly elliptic, ovate or oblanceolate, 9.2–25.5 × 7–9 cm, apex acute to obtuse, base cuneate or obtuse; midrib raised above and strongly raised below; secondary veins fine but clearly visible, raised below, brochidodromous with two intra-marginal veins (mainly in female); tertiary veins a mixture of reticulate and scalariform, fine and prominent. Glands fine, conspicuous below, invisible above, in dark to grey-black wavy lines, running across the secondary veins, at c. 70º from the midrib to the margin. Inflorescences terminal in a cluster of 3– 5 male flowers and usually solitary in the female but sometimes with 2–3 flowers, male flowers smaller than female; sepals and petals 4. Male flowers to 3 cm across when open; pedicel round or slightly angled, stout, to 15 mm long; petals pinkish and sepals yellowish, leathery, unequal in size, inner parts usually larger than outer, concave to orbicular, 15–20 mm across; stamens in a single mass, square (4-angled) to slightly cylindrical or nearly conical to cylindrical, surrounding base of pistillode, to 20 mm tall; pistillode broadly fungiform, or small, tipped with a convex or mushroom-like cap, margin lobed and crenate, to 5 mm across, or sometimes pistillode absent; anthers 2-thecous with apical slits, nearly sessile or with a short filament. Female flowers larger than male, to 5 cm across when open; pedicel as in the male; sepals and petals as in the male but larger, to 20 mm across; ovary surrounded by a few to 20 irregular, free staminodes; ovary dwarf fungiform, tipped with a skull-cap stigma, 4–5-lobed. Fruits greenish yellow turning pinkish red and finally to purplish black, ovoid or pear-shaped, ellipsoid or globose, to 3–6 cm across, tipped with the black, sessile or protruding stigma of 4–8-lobed, wedge-shaped or square bundles, surface rugose or smooth, fused in the middle, usually the number of lobes or bundles equalling the number of ovules; seeds with white, gelatinous, edible aril.

Distribution and Habitat:—Cultivated throughout the tropics, especially in Southeast Asia. Wild varieties are found in Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra and Borneo.

Taxonomic Notes:— Garcinia malaccensis is reduced to a variety based on morphology, especially in the fruit, and molecular sequence data ( Nazre 2014), where the ITS sequence is similar to G. mangostana . The varieties can only be distinguished with fertile and mature material although male trees are rarely found.