Wood Anatomical Variations in Species of Shorea of Balau Group of Malay Peninsula - a Tool for Identification

The present paper deals with the variations in physical, gross and minute anatomical features of different species of Shorea of the balau group in the Malay peninsula. Variance ratio (F) test indicated that inter-specific variations among the wood element dimensions of studied species of Shorea were significant while intra-species variations were non-significant for all the characters. A dichotomous key is presented for identification on the basis of anatomical characters upto the species level. The key is based on a pair of contrasting characters e.g. ray height, ray width, diameter of gum canal, ray seriation, location and type of crystals, density of wood and colour. Differences in quantitative characters are analysed using 't' test for the mean. Besides, features like frequency and types of gum canals viz. solitary, in short tangential lines and in short and long tangential lines and density of woods are also used. The occurrence and location of prismatic crystals are found to be of diagnostic value at the species level for balau group Prismatic crystals observed in parenchyma cells as solitary and also chambered (2-25) in normal and idioblast cells. Prismatic crystals were reported in ray cells of S. maxwelliana King first time.