Aubrevillea Pellegr., Bull. Soc. Bot. France 80: 466. 1933.

Figs 120, 121, 122, 124

Type.

Aubrevillea kerstingii (Harms) Pellegr. [≡ Piptadenia kerstingii Harms]

Description.

Tall trees (Fig. 120G), unarmed. Stipules inconspicuous, setaceous. Leaves bipinnate, eglandular; pinnae 4-8 pairs per leaf; leaflets 8-30 opposite pairs per pinna, sessile, oblong-oblanceolate or falcate, apex often emarginate, base asymmetric (Fig. 121E). Inflorescence a panicle of spiciform racemes, terminal or axillary. Flowers shortly pedicellate, bisexual, pale green to pale yellow or white; calyx gamosepalous, cupuliform, shallowly toothed, puberulous; hypanthium as long as the calyx tube; petals lanceolate, basally connate, puberulous outside, adnate basally with the stamens and a perigynous disc forming a stemonozone; stamens (8-)10, fertile, filaments basally connate, anthers eglandular; pollen tricolporate, finely reticulate, dispersed as monads; ovary villose, ovules 5-7, style short, stigma widely porate. Fruit (Fig. 122J) laterally compressed, papyraceous, indehiscent, oblong, its proximal end twisted. Seeds flat, reniform, lacking endosperm.

Chromosome number.

Unknown.

Included species and geographic distribution.

Two species ( A. kerstingii and A. platycarpa Pellegr.) from tropical west and central Africa, from Liberia and Guinea east to eastern Central African Republic and south to the Democratic Republic of Congo (Fig. 124).

Ecology.

Rainforest, with outliers in seasonally dry Sudanian woodland and wooded grassland.

Etymology.

Named for Prof. A. Aubreville (1897-1982), a noted French forester, ecologist and taxonomist (Luckow 2005).

Human uses.

Used in traditional medicines, for timber, and as a shade tree (Luckow 2005).

Notes.

Pellegrin (1933) established the genus Aubrevillea to accommodate a newly described tree with indehiscent, papery fruits with a twisted base from Côte d’Ivoire, A. platycarpa, and proposed the new combination A. kerstingii for a tree with similar fruits from Togo and Côte d’Ivoire in light of new fruiting material that Harms (1907) had not seen when he tentatively placed this taxon in Piptadenia .

Taxonomic references.

Villiers (1989).