''Didymocheton mollis'' is a species of

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 ...

in the family

Meliaceae Meliaceae, the mahogany family, is a flowering plant family of mostly trees and shrubs (and a few herbaceous plants, mangroves) in the order Sapindales. They are characterised by alternate, usually pinnate leaves without stipules, and by syncarp ...

. It is a tree native to

Sulawesi Sulawesi ( ), also known as Celebes ( ), is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the List of islands by area, world's 11th-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Min ...

, the

Maluku Islands The Maluku Islands ( ; , ) or the Moluccas ( ; ) are an archipelago in the eastern part of Indonesia. Tectonics, Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located in West ...

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is ...

, and the

Bismarck Archipelago The Bismarck Archipelago (, ) is a group of islands off the northeastern coast of New Guinea in the western Pacific Ocean and is part of the Islands Region of Papua New Guinea. Its area is about . History The first inhabitants of the archipela ...

. It is most closely related to '' Didymocheton mollissimus'' of

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 ...

and mainland Southeast Asia, '' D. alliaceus'' of the Solomon Islands and western Pacific Islands, and '' D. muelleri'' of northeastern Australia.

Taxonomy

The species was first described as ''Dysoxylum molle'' by

Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel (24 October 1811 – 23 January 1871) was a Dutch botanist whose main focus of study was on the flora of the Dutch East Indies. Early life Miquel was born in Neuenhaus and studied medicine at the University of Gr ...

in 1868, from a

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

collected in southwestern

. In 1994

David Mabberley Professor David John Mabberley , (born May 1948) is a British botanist, educator and writer. Among his varied scientific interests is the taxonomy of tropical plants, especially trees of the families Labiatae, Meliaceae and Rutaceae (in parti ...

reclassified it as ''Dysoxylum mollissimum'' subsp. ''molle'', which included the populations in Sulawesi, Maluku, New Guinea, and the Bismarck Archipelago, along with Australian populations previously classified as ''Dysoxylum muelleri''. A 2021 study by Holzmeyer, Hauenschild, Mabberley, ''et al.'' concluded that ''Dysoxylum'' was

polyphyletic A polyphyletic group is an assemblage that includes organisms with mixed evolutionary origin but does not include their most recent common ancestor. The term is often applied to groups that share similar features known as Homoplasy, homoplasies ...

, and that the Australian population constituted a distinct species from the northern population. The species was placed in the revived genus '' Didymocheton'', with the Sulawesi-to-Bismarck Archipelago population renamed ''Didymocheton mollis'', and the Australian population under the new combination '' Didymocheton muelleri''. The Australian population is still widely known as ''Dysoxylum mollissimum'' subsp. ''molle''.

References

{{Taxonbar, from1=Q124536575, from2=Q5319530 mollis Flora of the Bismarck Archipelago Flora of the Maluku Islands Flora of New Guinea Flora of Sulawesi Plants described in 1868 Taxa named by Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel