''Urbanodendron'' is a genus of flowering plants in the family

Lauraceae Lauraceae, or the laurels, is a plant family that includes the true laurel and its closest relatives. This family comprises about 2850 known species in about 45 genera worldwide (Christenhusz & Byng 2016 ). They are dicotyledons, and occur ma ...

. The three species are native to

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. Little information is available about the genus because the species are rare and endangered. These are evergreen monoecious trees with alternately arranged leaves. The flowers have six

tepals A tepal is one of the outer parts of a flower (collectively the perianth). The term is used when these parts cannot easily be classified as either sepals or petals. This may be because the parts of the perianth are undifferentiated (i.e. of very ...

and nine stamens. Quinet, A
Sinopse taxonômica da família Lauraceae no Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.
''Acta bot. bras'' 19.3 (2005): 563-572. These are endemic species of the Brazilian tropical seasonal semi-deciduous montane forests, the

cloud forest A cloud forest, also called a water forest, primas forest, or tropical montane cloud forest (TMCF), is a generally tropical or subtropical, evergreen, montane, moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud c ...

. In 1978, after five centuries of occupation and the effects of various economic cycles, the

Brazilian Atlantic Forest The Atlantic Forest ( pt, Mata Atlântica) is a South American forest that extends along the Atlantic coast of Brazil from Rio Grande do Norte state in the northeast to Rio Grande do Sul state in the south and inland as far as Paraguay and the ...

, has been reduced to about only 7.6% of its original extension, in a drastic deforestation.Christo, A. G., et al. (2009)
Structure of the shrub-arboreal component of an Atlantic forest fragment on a hillock in the central lowland of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
''Interciencia: Revista de ciencia y tecnología de América'', 34(4), 232-239.

Species

There are three species: * '' Urbanodendron bahiense'' ( Meisn.) Rohwer * '' Urbanodendron macrophyllum'' Rohwer * '' Urbanodendron verrucosum'' (Nees) Mez

References

Lauraceae genera Taxonomy articles created by Polbot Endemic flora of Brazil Lauraceae {{Laurales-stub