Nectandra cuspidata

Nectandra cuspidata is a medium-sized evergreen tree in the Lauraceae native to the Neotropics, occurring from southern Mexico through Central America and into Amazonian and Atlantic-forest South America, especially Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and the Guianas. It typically reaches 10-25 m in height with a straight bole and a dense, rounded crown. The bark is grey-brown and finely fissured; cut bark is aromatic. Leaves are alternate, simple, elliptic to oblong-lanceolate, 8-20 cm long, with a sharply acuminate (cuspidate) tip from which the epithet is derived, glabrous and glossy above, paler and sometimes pubescent below. Small whitish-cream flowers with six perianth segments and nine fertile stamens are borne in axillary panicles. The fruit is an ellipsoid drupe 1-2 cm long seated in a cupule of accrescent perianth, ripening from green to dark purple-black. It is a canopy or sub-canopy element of lowland and lower montane rainforest.