Scientific name: Dacrycarpus imbricatus (Blume) de Laubenfels 1969

Synonyms:Bracteocarpus imbricatus (Blume) A.V.Bobrov & Melikyan, Bracteocarpus kawaii (Hayata) A.V.Bobrov & Melikyan, Dacrycarpus kawaii (Hayata) Gaussen, Nageia cupressina (R.Br. ex Benn.) F.Muell., Podocarpus cupressinus R.Br. ex Benn., Podocarpus horsfieldii R.Br. ex Wall., Podocarpus imbricatus Blume, Podocarpus javanicus (Burm.f.) Merr., Podocarpus kawaii Hayata, Thuja javanica Burm.f.

Common names: Malayan yellowwood, Ji mao song (Chinese), Mạy hương (Thai), Thông nàng (Vietnamese), Kau tambua (Fijian)

Description

Shrub, or tree to 35(-50) m tall, shorter when open-grown, with trunk to 1.2(-2) m in diameter. Bark thin, fairly smooth, mottled gray, black, dark brown, and reddish brown through flaking in irregular patches and scales. Crown densely conical at first becoming variously cylindrical or egg- to dome-shaped with age and ultimately ragged and open, with a few major downswept, horizontal, and upright limbs breaking up into branches bearing many upright to drooping branchlets densely clothed with foliage. Short shoots predominant in juvenile plants and progressively reduced with age but still consistently, if sporadically, produced on mature trees, especially in shaded portions of the crown. Leaves of short shoots in two flat rows, flattened side to side, with a gently, continuous, forward S curve, longest near the middle or closer to the base of the shoot, (6-)10-17 mm long and 1-2(-2.5) mm wide, ending with a blunt point. Leaves of adult foliage shoots arranged all around the twig and sticking out from or tight against it, curved forward. Individual leaves variable among the four botanical varieties, triangular to sword-shaped, half-moon-shaped to triangular in cross section with a prominent midrib beneath and sometimes above, (0.1-)0.8-2(-5) mm long, 0.4-1.0 mm wide, not prickly. Pollen cones (5-)6-12 mm long, 2-2.5 mm thick, borne at the tip or sides of a very short branchlet 1-3 mm long. seed cones at the tip of a short branchlet 3-10(-20) mm long, surrounded at the base by a circle of leafy, free bracts 1-3.5(-5) mm long. Podocarpium warty, red, 3-4 mm long, with one (or two) fertile bracts. Combined seed coat and epimatium roughly spherical, 5-6(-7) mm long, 4-6 mm in diameter, red to reddish brown at maturity, with a low crest whose free tip is hardly noticeable as a dimpled beak less than 1 mm long.

Discontinuous throughout southeastern Asia, Malesia, and Melanesia, from northern Sumatra (Indonesia), northern Myanmar, southern China (southern Yunnan, Guangxi, and Hainan), and Luzon (Philippines) to Vanuatu and Fiji. Forming pure stands or mixed with other conifers or various evergreen hardwoods in or towering above the canopy of an enormous range of primary and secondary forest types, most frequently in montane rain forests of middle elevation but also occurring in wetter mossy forests (as in New Guinea) on the one hand or contrastingly in seasonally dry forests (as in Fiji) or at the margins of natural and post-logging savannas (as in Timor), sometimes on steep, slide-prone slopes (as in northern Sumatra) or in ravine forests (China and Indochina); (100-)700-2,700(3,400) m, varying considerably throughout its range.

Conservation Status

Red List Category & Criteria: Least Concern

(Due to its very wide distribution from southern China to Fiji in the southwest Pacific, Dacrycarpus imbricatus is currently assessed as Least Concern)

References

Farjon, A. (2010). A Handbook of the World's Conifers. Koninklijke Brill, Leiden.

Eckenwalder, J.E. (2009) Conifers of the World: The Complete Reference. Timber Press, Portland.

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. Cambridge, UK /Gland, Switzerland