Virola michelii Heckel

Bolivia (Pando); Brazil (Amapá, Amazonas, Maranhao, Pará, Roraima); Guyana, south; Suriname; French Guiana

Wood used for building construction. The seed exudates a fat similar to those of Virola surinamensis, and is used similarly to make candles and soap.

Common throughout its range. Rather than preferring marshes or river margins, this species favors firmer soils in undisturbed jungle.

Tree; branchlets striate, when young brown puberulent, soon glabrous and nigrescent or cinereous; petioles deeply canaliculate, essentially glabrous, 1-2 mm. in diameter, 4-10 mm. long; leaf blades chartaceous, narrowly elliptic or oblong- or obovate-elliptic, 9-18 cm. long, 2.5-6 cm. broad, attenuate or acute at base, subacute or obtusely cuspidate at apex, puberulent beneath (hairs cinereous, sessile-stellate, 4-6-branched, less than 0.1 mm. in diameter, long persistent), the costa shallowly grooved or nearly plane above, prominent beneath, the secondary nerves 13-22 per side, spreading or slightly ascending, plane or sharply impressed above, raised beneath, the veinlets usually obscure, sometimes plane or prominulous; staminate infloreseences once- or twice-branched, 2-9 cm. long, uniformly ferruginous- or cinereous- puberulent (hairs sessile-stellate, minute, soon deciduous on the branchlets, persistent on the flowers), the peduncle up to 2.5 cm. long, slightly flattened; bracts oblong, puberulent, 3-5 mm. long, soon deciduous; flowers in ultimate clusters of 5-15, the ultimate peduncles slightly swollen distally, the pedicels slender, up to 3 mm. long; perianth carnose, 2-3.5 mm. long, 3-lobed nearly to base, the lobes oblong, obtuse; androecium 1.5-1.7 mm. long, the filament column slender, 0.8-1 mm. long, the anthers 3, 0.5-0.7 mm. long, connate to apex, obtuse; pistillate inflorescences more compact than the staminate, the flowers 2-4 per cluster, the pedicels stout, up to 3 mm. long; ovary ellipsoid, closely puberulent, the style short, the stigma slightly oblique; fruiting inflorescences 4-6 cm. long, uniformly and closely brown puberulent (hairs branched from base), the branchlets at length glabrescent, the fruits persistently puberulent, 1-4 per mature inflorescence, pedicellate (pedicels stout, 3-9 mm. long), ellipsoid, at maturity 25-30 mm. long, 17-24 mm. broad, conspicuously carinate on one side and often smooth on the other, rounded or short-stipitate at base, obtuse or minutely apiculate at apex, the pericarp woody, 3-4 mm. thick, the aril laciniate nearly to base, the seed ellipsoid, smooth.

Virola melinonii is a species of tree in the family Myristicaceae.