King ex Hook.f.
Description
Machilus duthei is an evergreen laurel of the Himalaya, recorded from northern India, Nepal and Pakistan, with relatively few documented occurrences across this western to central Himalayan range. It is a tree of moist temperate broad-leaved evergreen forest, occurring on shaded slopes, in ravines and along forested watercourses. It grows at mid to upper montane elevations; the tree photographed near the Ringi-Chu in Sikkim at 3,100 m in May represents an upper-elevation occurrence in the cool, humid temperate forest belt, where laurels form a notable element of the canopy and subcanopy.
The plant is a medium-sized evergreen tree with smooth bark and glabrous to finely pubescent young shoots. The leaves are alternate, coriaceous, elliptic to oblong-lanceolate, entire, glabrous and glossy above, somewhat glaucous beneath, with pinnate venation and aromatic tissue typical of the family. The flowers are small, bisexual and trimerous, with six subequal perianth segments and stamens in whorls, the inner whorl glandular, borne in axillary or subterminal panicles. The fruit is a globose to ellipsoid berry seated on a persistent, slightly enlarged perianth cup at the apex of the pedicel.
The genus Machilus, closely allied to and sometimes merged with Persea, comprises evergreen Asian laurels of considerable importance in moist subtropical and temperate forest. Machilus duthei, described by King ex Hooker f. and commemorating the botanist J. F. Duthie, is a comparatively narrowly distributed Himalayan species. Given its limited documented range and dependence on undisturbed humid montane forest, it is vulnerable to habitat degradation and logging, and its sparse records indicate a need for further field survey to assess its true distribution and conservation status.
Author: King ex Hook.f. · Sources: POWO (Kew), Flora of China Vol. 7, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, GBIF, Kostermans: Lauraceae studies