Dehaasia is a genus of evergreen or deciduous trees or shrubs belonging to the laurel family, Lauraceae, with 42 species native to continental Asia, from India to China, Borneo, New Guinea, and Indonesia.
They are bisexual shrubs or trees of medium size up to 5 m tall. in tropical montane forest, lowland rainforest, subtropical coastal lowland rainforest, cloud forest, and laurel forest. Species are found in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, with the center of diversity in west Malaysia; three species occur in China, two endemic. Alseodaphne, Dehaasia and Nothaphoebe are, morphologically, three closely related but different genera in a subgroup near to genus Persea.
The leaves are bright green to dark green, alternate, oblong to lanceolate to almost elliptical, acuminate, and slightly cut at the base. They are leathery in texture, glossy on both sides, dark green on the upper face more intense, sometimes with small blisters on the underside.
The trunk is rough and irregular, covered usually with a paper bark, whitish or gray, smooth and easy to peel, with the xylem yellow. Some species with multiple stems or trunks are strongly branched from the base. The young branches are slender, angular, smoothly integumented, with visible signs of scars and sometimes reddish areas of recent growth. The branchlets are yellow-white at first, but a little gray later, thin, glabrous, warty, lenticellated with distinctive leaf scars, the young more or less angled.
The leaves are grouped at the tip of the twigs. The inflorescences form in the axils, are generally thin with many bracts and few flowers, usually upright and branched at right angles. Dehaasia species have bisexual flowers, i.e. they have both male and female organs.
The fruit are or sometimes nearly spherical, with a fleshy exocarp. The fruit stalk is usually scarlet, sometimes yellow or green. Seed dispersal of Dehaasia species is by vertebrates mostly. They are eaten by fruit-eating bats and birds (columbiformes) and several insects such as ants.
Species , Plants of the World Online accepts 42 species:
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A synopsis of the genus Dehaasia Bl. (Lauraceae) Chemical constituents from Dehaasia triandra. 1. Three new alkaloids, isocorydione, norisocorydione, and dehatriphine, from the leaves Chemical constituents from Dehaasia triandra. II. Five new alkaloids, secoxanthoplanine, dehydroisocorydione, 11, 8′-O-bisisocorydine,(8, 8′-R)-and (8, 8′-S)