flowering plant
Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...
s and the genus of family
Dipterocarpaceae
Dipterocarpaceae is a family (biology), family of flowering plants with 22 genera and about 695 known species of mainly lowland tropical forest trees. Their distribution is pantropical, from northern South America to Africa, the Seychelles, India ...
. The name ''Dryobalanops'' is derived from
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
(''dryas'' = a nymph associated with oaks and ''balanops'' = acorn) and describes the acorn-like nut. The genus has seven species, confined to the tropical forests of western
Malesia
Malesia is a biogeographical region straddling the Equator and the boundaries of the Indomalayan and Australasian realms. It is a phytogeographical floristic region in the Paleotropical kingdom. It was first recognized as a distinct region ...
(Sumatra, Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo). It is among the most abundant species of emergent trees in these forests, growing up to 80 m tall.
The genus is of considerable importance as timber trees and sold under the trade name Kapur. The timber is an important heavy and durable construction timber. ''D. aromatica'' was an important source of
camphor
Camphor () is a waxy, colorless solid with a strong aroma. It is classified as a terpenoid and a cyclic ketone. It is found in the wood of the camphor laurel (''Cinnamomum camphora''), a large evergreen tree found in East Asia; and in the kapu ...
.
As the trees mature, they mutually avoid touching each other in a phenomenon known as
crown shyness
Crown shyness (also ''canopy disengagement'', ''canopy shyness'', or ''inter-crown spacing'') is a phenomenon observed in some tree species, in which the crowns of fully stocked trees do not touch each other, forming a canopy with channel-like ...