Dipterocarpaceae

Dipterocarpaceae is a family of flowering plants with 22 genera and about 695 known species of mainly lowland tropical forest trees. Their distribution is pantropical, from northern South America to Africa, the Seychelles, India, Indochina, Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines. The greatest diversity of Dipterocarpaceae occurs in Borneo.

The largest genera are Shorea (196 species), Hopea (104 species), Dipterocarpus (70 species), and Vatica (65 species). Many are large forest-emergent species, typically reaching heights of 40–70 m, some even over 80 m (in the genera Dryobalanops, Hopea and Shorea), with the tallest known living specimen (Shorea faguetiana) 93.0 m tall. Named Menara, 'tower' in Malay, this specimen is a yellow meranti tree. It grows in the Danum Valley in Sabah.

The species of this family are of major importance in the timber trade. Some species are now endangered as a result of overcutting, extensive illegal logging, and habitat conversion. They provide valuable woods, aromatic essential oils, balsam, and resins, and are a source for plywood.

The family name comes from the type genus Dipterocarpus which is derived from Greek words δι di "two", πτερόν pteron "wing", and καρπός karpós "fruit"; the words combined refer to the two-winged fruit available from trees of that genus, other related genera with winged fruits of more than two are included in the family as well.

The dipterocarp family is generally divided into two subfamilies:

A recent genetic study found that the Asian dipterocarps share a common ancestor with the Sarcolaenaceae, a tree family endemic to Madagascar. This suggests that ancestor of the dipterocarps originated in the southern supercontinent of Gondwana, and that the common ancestor of the Asian dipterocarps and the Sarcolaenaceae was found in the India-Madagascar-Seychelles land mass millions of years ago, and were carried northward by India, which later collided with Asia and allowed the dipterocarps to spread across Southeast Asia and Malaysia. Although associated with Southeast Asia in contemporary times, recent studies using fossil pollen and molecular data suggest an African origin in the mid-cretaceous. Prior to this research, the first dipterocarp pollen was found in Myanmar (which at that time was part of the Indian Plate) and it dates from the upper Oligocene. The sample appears to slowly increase in terms of diversity and abundance across the region into the mid-Miocene. Chemical traces of dipterocarp resins have been found dating back to the Eocene of India. The oldest fossil of the family are from the latest Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) aged Intertrappean Beds of India, assignable to the extant genus Dipterocarpus.

Subfamily Pakaraimoideae containing the sole genus Pakaraimaea, formerly placed here and native to the Guaianan highlands of South America, is now found to be more closely related the Cistaceae and is placed there in the APG IV (2016).

Some 52-million-year-old amber found in the Gujarat province, India, containing a large amount of fossilized arthropods, was identified as sap from the family Dipterocarpaceae.