Licaria is a flowering plant genus in the family Lauraceae, native to Central America and South America. It is a Neotropical genus with around 80 species.

Overview

Licaria is a Neotropical genus consisting of about 80 species distributed from southern Florida, Mexico to the south of Brazil and Bolivia. In Brazil, the occurrence of 20 species and two subspecies, mostly in the Amazon region (Kurz 2000). These trees have a resilient wood, useful as timber, for construction and as firewood.

Description

They are evergreen monoecious, hermaphrodite, trees or rarely bushes. Leaves lax at the apex of the branches, without papillae on the abaxial epidermis of the leaves. The leaves are alternate or opposite but rarely opposite, entire, subcoriaceous in some species of Central America as Nicaragua, glabrous on the upper, glabrous or pubescent on the underside, pinnatinervium. Flowers in panicles terminating in a top. The inflorescences in axillary, paniculata so capitated, the tepals generally the same, with three stamens, the anthers exserted or included at anthesis, filaments free or fused. Flowers monoclinic with hypanthium urceolate, not depressed below the tepals, tepals 6, generally erect, equal inner surface without papillae. Androecium with three stamens fertile, filaments generally the same width as anthers or more slender, anthers bilocelares: 1st and 2nd series with stamens absent or transformed into staminodes; third grade with 3 stamens, a pair of glands at the base of fiaments present, reduced, never fused, or absent, anthers introrse or extrorse-apical; estaminodial fourth grade absent or rarely present with 3 staminodes. The fruit is a berry with deciduous tepals.

Species

Species accepted by the Plants of the World Online as of 2022: