Field and Morphometric Studies ofPhyllobotryonMüell.Arg. (Salicaceae) in the Korup Forest Area of Cameroon

Morphometric analysis of Phyllobotryon Muell.Arg. in the Korup Forest Area of Cameroon recognizes three distinct morphospecies (1-3), which show significant variation in several leaf and fruit characters. In order to clarify the taxonomy of Phyllobotryon, we conducted univariate and multivariate analyses on sixteen quantitative and four qualitative characters scored from 111 fresh samples. Analysis of Variance revealed nine significant quantitative characters from which the first three Principal Components accounted for 74.6 % of the total variation. Results from Discriminant Analysis strongly support the existence of two groups (96.2 % and 100 %) representing Morphospecies 2 and 3, but morphospecies 2 is only weakly supported (88.9 %) as distinct from morphospecies 1. Characters such as petiole length, fruit surface ornamentation, style & calyx persistence, flower and fruit orientation and leaf shape are of