Tree(let) up to 40 m high and 90 cm Ø, but usually smaller; occasionally with buttresses up to 1¾ m high, ¾ m wide, 5 cm thick; when growing in swamps often with prop-roots at the base as well as with slender-kneed loop roots or pneumato-phores to over 1 m high (Fig. 62). Bark grey, ochre, brown, or light red to almost (purplish) black, (smooth or) vertically cracked or closely to distantly fissured, rarely scaly. Leaves elliptic, elliptic-oblong, rarely obovate-oblong, 5½-40 by 2½-19cm; densely pubescent, sometimes glab-rescent beneath, glabrous above; base acute to cuneate; apex obtuse, sometimes emarginate; nerves 10-36 pairs, veins reticulate-scalariform, distinct or sometimes rather faint beneath, faint or obscure above; petiole distinct, 2-8 cm. Panicles up to 35 cm long, profusely branched, branches up to 10 cm, sometimes with rather simple, scant, short branches and seemingly racemose; bracts triangular, 1-2½ mm long; pedicels very short or obscure. Flowers greenish yellow or yellow. Calyx lobes slightly triangular, ¾-l mm long. Petals broadly ovate or ovate, c. 1¾ by 1-1½ mm. Stamens 1-1½ mm; staminodes in ♀ shorter and smaller. Disk ¾-1⅓ mm Ø. Ovary subglobose, c. ¾ mm Ø. Drupe ovoid, 12-18 by 8-16½ mm, black when ripe; septum hollow.
Dominant in freshwater (peat-, sago-) swamps to scattered or rare in mixed primary forest on well-drained soils, sometimes in secondary forest, from the lowland up to 500 m, once found at 1000 m (Kalabit Highlands, Sarawak). Fl. fr. Jan.-Dec.
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A mid-canopy tree, often gregarious, usually in undisturbed freshwater or peat-swamp forests at elevations up to 1,000 metres. It is sometimes found growing at the seashore and on hillsides with well-drained, sandy soils.
Uses. ROBBINS & PULLEN Land Res. Ser. CSIRO 15 1965 108 recorded tigaso-oil for this species (see also sub C. brevipetiolatum) which is "traded extensively throughout the Southern Highlands (of Papua New Guinea) to the north as a body oil for 'sing-sing' decoration". It is possible, however, that this record relates to either C. brevipetiolatum or C. montanum.
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