Uvariopsis dicaprio
Uvariopsis dicaprio is a species of tropical evergreen tree in the genus Uvariopsis. It is endemic to the Ebo Forest, in the Littoral Region of Cameroon. It was the first new plant species described in 2022, and was named after American actor Leonardo DiCaprio by botanists Martin Cheek and George Gosline, from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. U. dicaprio is classified as Critically Endangered in the IUCN Red List.
Description
Uvariopsis dicaprio is an evergreen tree reaching tall. Its trunk is smooth and tapering, reaching a diameter of "1.8–2.5 cm … at 1.5 m above the ground", with dark brown bark and occasional white horizontal lenticels.Its leaves are oblanceolate, and are typically 17.7–20.3 cm long and typically 7–7.9 cm wide. They are hairless, and coloured "pale yellow-green" but later turn "orangish brown". Their arrangement is distichous, and they are typically spaced 1.5–2.8 cm apart.
The specimen collected had only male flowers, but Gosline & Cheek et al. hypothesise that U. dicaprio is monoecious, with separate male and female flowers. Its male flowers are cauliflorous, growing directly from the stem, and glossy. Their pedicels, which connect the flower to the stem, are 1.8–2.5 cm long and about 1 mm in diameter. Each flower has two sepals and four petals. The sepals are 1–1.5 by 2.1–2.5 mm and hairless. The petals are typically about 16 by 9 mm, and 0.25–0.3 mm thick; they are thin and leathery but not fleshy, and are "yellow-green when live" but black when dried. There are typically 4–7 flowers in each inflorescence. It has similar conical flower buds to Uvariopsis solheidii, which can vary from ovoid-conical to pyramidal.