Loreya

  • Authority

    Renner, Susanne S. 1989. Systematic studies in the Melastomataceae Bellucia, Loreya and Macairea. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 50: 1-112.

  • Family

    Melastomataceae

  • Scientific Name

    Loreya

  • Description

    Species Description - Small to large trees, (3-)10-20(-38) m high; trunk cylindrical; bark smooth or rarely longitudinally fissured, light gray or brown, slash wound red. Leaves opposite, simple, petiolate, usually large and membranaceous, drying dark brown, loosely or densely strigulose, strigose, or sericeous with smooth eglandular hairs or rarely minute glandular hairs or glabrous, venation consisting of a mid-vein and 2-3 pairs of suprabasal primaries or venation pinnate (in L. nigricans), margin entire or serrulate (mostly in young leaves). Inflorescences bome on the old wood, few-branched cymes on a well developed peduncle, or contracted cymes with the peduncle short or lacking, or clusters of few flowers. Flowers hermaphroditic, 5-merous, except in two species where 6-merous flowers occasional; hypanthium hemispherical; calyx limb truncate, lobes vestigial; petals ovate, elliptic, or broadly triangular, apex obtuse, irregular, or subacute, fleshy, often with adaxial callus ridges and some development of lateral flaps, pink outside and pink and white inside, or completely pink, or white; stamens twice as many as the petals, isomorphic, glabrous, laterally compressed, the anthers and filaments of about equal length; anthers thick, 1- or 2-pored, the connective not prolonged but fleshy, with a more or less pronounced dorsi-basal callus; ovary completely inferior and fused with the hypanthium wall, 5 (-6)- or 10-locular, apically with 10 radial ridges; stigma capitate and 5-lobed (occasionally 6-lobed in L. riparia and L. subrotundifolia); style glabrous, thick, terete, sigmoid, longer than the stamens. Fruit a many-seeded hemispherical, glabrous or hirsute, yellow or red/blue berry. Seeds minute, 0.5-1.4 mm long, ovoid or wedge-shaped with an elongate lateral hilum, testa regularly tuberculate or with an irregular surface of shallow grooves formed by groups of adjacent cells.

  • Discussion

    Loreya arborescens (Aublet) De Candolle.

    Heteroneuron Hooker i. in Bentham & Hooker, Gen. pl. 1(3): 768. 1867.

  • Distribution

    A neotropical genus of 13 species, ranging from Nicaragua to northern Bolivia, primarily upper Amazonian lowlands; lowlands to 1400 m.