Weinmannia spiraeoides

Weinmannia spiraeoides is an extinct species of the family of Cunoniaceae. She was endemic to the Fiji Islands.

Features

Weinmannia spiraeoides was a small tree of height not described. The branches were like the petioles, leaf midribs and leaf undersides with bright, 0.5 to 0.8 mm long bristle hair covered. The leaves were stalked 13 to 27 mm long and feathered fünfzählig. The up to 1 mm long stalked parchment-like leaflets were sharpened by lanceolate - elliptical shape at both ends, 3 to 6 inches long and 1 to 2.5 inches wide. They possessed on each side 5-9 lateral nerves were cut and the edge with three to four teeth per inch sharp. The permanent side leaves were 7 to 10 mm long, round to oval and serrated on the edge also. The upper leaf surface was, except on the midrib, mostly bald. The inflorescence is unknown.

Status

Weinmannia spiraeoides is only from the holotype, a branch without flowers or fruit, known to the 1840 collected on the Fiji island of Ovalau at an altitude of 150 m and in the Herbarium of the Arnold Arboretum is today. The taxonomic status of the species is controversial. So suspected the botanist Charles Albert Smith in 1952 in the Journal of the Arnold Arboretum, that it could have been Weinmannia spiraeoides a seedling of Weinmannia richii. At the same time Smith remarked, however, that the hair and the toothed stipules of young plants of the taxon Weinmannia differed richii.