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Hymenaea is a genus of plants in the legume family Fabaceae. Of the fourteen living species in the genus, all but one are native to the tropics of the Americas, with one additional species ( Hymenaea verrucosa) on the east coast of Africa. Some authors place the African species in a separate Monotypic taxon genus, Trachylobium.Gwilym Lewis, Brian Schrire, Barbara MacKinder, and Mike Lock. 2005. Legumes of the World. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: Richmond, England. In the Neotropics, Hymenaea is distributed through the Caribbean islands, and from southern Mexico to Brazil. Carl Linnaeus named the genus in 1753 in Species Plantarum for Hymenaios, the Greek god of marriage ceremonies. The name is a reference to the paired leaflets.
Most species of Hymenaea are large and they are primarily evergreen. They may grow to a height of and emerge above the forest canopy. Some species will grow both as tall forest trees and as smaller shrubby trees depending on their surrounding habitat. The leaf are pinnately bifoliolate, meaning that they have two leaflets attached to the sides of the petiole. The grow in a panicle or corymb type of inflorescence.
The trees also make hard that are used to manufacture varnish, especially the resin from Hymenaea courbaril (jatobá) in Brazil. The resin that is produced in Brazil is known as copal, and Hymenaea verrucosa is the source of the valuable Zanzibar copal. Resin may be collected from living trees, or from the soil near the place where a tree once stood. Throughout its American range, indigenous peoples use the resin for incense and as a cement. Resin from the extinct species Hymenaea protera is the source of Dominican amber, while the extinct Hymenaea mexicana produced the resin which is the source of Mexican amber.
Hymenaea courbaril has been used as a model organism to study the effect of increased concentration on the rate of photosynthesis in neotropical regions.
When the concentration of was increased from an ambient reference level of 360ppm to 720ppm, the photosynthetic assimilation in the seedlings doubled. This suggests the species could play an important role in greenhouse gas sequestration, as atmospheric is expected to reach ca. 700 ppm by the year 2075 if current levels of fossil fuel consumption are maintained.
Hymenaea courbaril is a very important species in programmes of recuperation of degraded rain forests in the Neotropics. It appears late in the natural regeneration process being classified as a 'late successional' or climax species.
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