''Harmandia mekongensis'' is a

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

s. It is the only species in the

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

genus of ''Harmandia''. In the

APG IV system The APG IV system of flowering plant classification is the fourth version of a modern, mostly molecular-based, system of plant taxonomy for flowering plants (angiosperms) being developed by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG). It was publishe ...

, the genus is placed in the family

Olacaceae Olacaceae is a family of flowering plants in the order Santalales. They are woody plants, native throughout the tropical regions of the world. , the circumscription of the family varies; some sources maintain a broad family, others split it into ...

. Other sources place it in the segregate family

Aptandraceae The Aptandraceae is a family of flowering plants in the sandalwood order Santalales that is recognized by some sources; others sink the family in Olacaceae. The members of the tropical plant family are parasitic on other plants, usually on the ro ...

. Its native range is

Indo-China Mainland Southeast Asia, also known as the Indochinese Peninsula or Indochina, is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west an ...

to western

Malesia Malesia is a biogeographical region straddling the Equator and the boundaries of the Indomalayan and Australasian realms, and also a phytogeographical floristic region in the Paleotropical Kingdom. It has been given different definitions. The ...

. It is found in the countries of Borneo, Cambodia, Laos, Malaya, Sumatera and Thailand. The genus name of ''Harmandia'' is in honour of Jules Harmand (1845–1921), a French naval doctor and naturalist, who collected plants in south-east Asia, Japan and present-day Sri Lanka. The Latin

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

of ''mekongensis'' is named after the

Mekong River The Mekong or Mekong River is a trans-boundary river in East Asia and Southeast Asia. It is the world's twelfth longest river and the third longest in Asia. Its estimated length is , and it drains an area of , discharging of water annuall ...

from where the plant was collected. It was first described and published in Bull. Mens. Soc. Linn. Paris Vol.2 on page 770 in 1889.

References

{{Taxonbar, from1=Q18082162, from2=Q51382731 Olacaceae Flora of Indo-China Flora of Malesia Plants described in 1889