Campnosperma brevipetiolatum Volkens

Tree up to 48 m high and 120 (exceptionally to 220) cm Ø. Buttresses absent or up to 2½(-4) m high, 2(-4) m wide, 15(-20) cm thick. Bark grey to cream, smooth but pustularly lenticellate, in large trees often fawn to light brown and scaly, less often shallowly fissured. Young leaves sometimes copper-tinted below, mature foliage green. Leaves oblanceolate, 14-56 by 4½-l7½ cm (up to 73 by 27 cm on vegetative twigs), densely pubescent on both surfaces when young, usually glabrescent except the basal part; base broadly, gradually decurrent, forming a pair of auricles (sometimes obscure or wanting on leaves of young or fertile twigs) near the insertion; apex obtuse or emarginate, sometimes shortly acuminate; nerves 17-28 pairs, veins reticulate-scalariform, distinct sometimes rather faint on both surfaces; petiole very short. Panicles up to 44 cm long, profusely branched, branches up to 19cm; sometimes with rather simple, short branches and seemingly racemose; bracts triangular, c.
 long; pedicels c. ⅓ mm. Flowers cream-coloured or yellow. Calyx lobes triangular, c. ½ mm long. Petals broadly ovate, 1-1½ by ¾-l mm. Stamens ⅔-l½ mm; staminodes in ♀ shorter and smaller. Ovary subglobose, c. ⅔ mm Ø. Drupe subglobose or globose, 5-7 mm Ø, through red to (purplish) black when ripe; septum hollow.

Dominant or co-dominant in freshwater (peat-and sago-)swamps to scattered or rare in mixed primary forest on well-drained soils, also in secondary forest; in the Solomon Is. 'Campnos-perma-forest' is also reported from slopes from the lowland up to c. 450 m. Fl. fr. Jan.-Dec.

Uses. The timber is used for making: canoes (1, 3, 4). The wood yields diumu-oil (Papuan Delta) or tigaso-oil (Lake Kutubu), which has some economic significance to the local people and is rubbed on the skin as an antiparasiticum (2, 4, 6, 7); the oil has also been used as medicine for harness sores on horses (5). References: (1) LANE-POOLE For. Res. Papua & N. G. 1925 18 (2) LANE-POOLE For. Res. Papua & N. G. 1925 60 & 106 (3) LANE-POOLE For. Res. Papua & N. G. 1925 62 (4) SALVERDA Rapport Expl. Z. W. Nieuw Guinea 1937 18 (as 'C. ?auriculatum') (5) VAN ROYEN Man. For. Trees Papua & N. G. 1964 2 (6) HEGNAUER Chemo-tax. Pfl. 3 1964 96 (7) PAIJMANS & PULLEN Land Res. Ser. CSIRO 23 1969 128

Can be grown by seedlings.