Cinnamomum sulphuratum ?

 

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Plant for ID | 16Apr2010AR01 : 9 posts by 6 authors. Attachments (3)

Plant for ID | 16Apr2010AR01
(record photo, photographed from 200 meters distance)
Narimale, Brahmagiri hills,
 07Dec2008, Elevation – 1405 meters, 
Height ~2 meters. Leaf length – 5 inches, 
Secondary venation – vertical,

I think these are the young red leaves of Cinnamomum tamala or commonly known as “tejpatta”.. Kindly validate my Identification. 
Looks like a young Cinnamomum species to me. I’ll leave it to the experts here to provide the correct specific epithet.

I am just using your format to indicate what I could observe in red letter (please don’t mind for using red color and bold text) I am excluding floral and fruit character because it’s absent in the plant…. I am quite sure it’s C tamala……

Please do not depend unauthorized internet sites for plant identification. Have a look at the following link for a blunder.
I strongly feel that we may not be able to id the species of Cinnamomum from a picture that too when the flowers or fruits are not available (exception is C riparium). Identification from just leaves are always confusing for Cinnamomum. Considering the altitude of Brahmagiri where the photo is taken there are possibilities of other species too.
Is C. tamala a recognized specific epithet or a synonym? I couldnt find the same in the literature. Would you please provide the literature/flora where it is given for reference.
Cinnamomum tamala is undoubtedly a valid name as far as I know and not a synonym. You can check out from the following efloras
  1. E-FLORA OF CHINA- http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=2&taxon_id=200008729
  2. E-FLORA OF PAKISTAN- http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=5&taxon_id=200008729

Thank you for your reply and the references. Now I am getting clear on one thing that, C.tamala may not be a Western Ghat species.  (please ref the following lines taken from flora of Pakistan link provided by tanay bose, “Type: From Derwani and Gongachora, cultivated in a garden at Rang-poor, Hamilton (BM). Distribution: Tropical and subtropical Himalayas from the Indus to Bhutan, ascending to 2000 m in Sikkim.” 

In the literature, flora and other checklists available from the Brahmagiri part of the Western Ghats, I couldn’t find the said species. However, I found that Nayar et al, 2006  in their wonderful work of Flowering plants of Kerala published by TBGRI has been excluded this species because of different reasons including “erroneously included or misidentified as evidenced from literature”. The only citation of C.tamala in South indian flora, as far as I know, is “Flowering plants of Travencore” by Rama Rao, M. 1914, which is excluded now.  

Now, I want to make it clear that I thought it would be a synonym  for C. malabathrum because someone has put C.tamala as “malabathrum” plant in wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malabathrum) again, the picture provided here is incorrect. This is why I asked whether it is a synonym or not.

You are right …. Cinnamomum tamala (popularly known as ‘Tejpata’ in northern India) is a Himalayan species and doesn’t occur in W.Ghats (Brahmagiri hills). It will be difficult to identify up to species level with the available image. We can only say it is not C. zeylanicum (= C. verum, not a wild sp.) and nor C. malabathrum (lvs will be larger).  
By looking at the elevation (may be shola type of forest) and the associations (Acacia, some fern and Eupatorium glandulosum) i guess it is a shola element so probably it is either C. wightii or C. camphora. However it needs confirmation.

Can it be Cinnamomum sulphuratum Nees as per images herein?