Four New Species of Meliosma (Sabiaceae) from Peru

Four new species of Meliosma are de- scribed from the Peruvian Andes as M. pumila, M. simiarum, M. sirensis, and M. youngii. Meliosma is emblematic of Peruvian cloud forest plants in its tendency to local endemism and in the incompleteness of taxonomic knowledge about it. Not a single species of Sabiaceae was known from Peru when Macbride (1956) treated related families in the Flora of Peru, but at least 17 Meliosma species (and three of lowland Ophiocaryon) are now known from the country (Gentry, 1986, in press). Four of the most distinctive of these are described here, all from the Peruvian Andes. These four spe- cies are all shrubs or small trees or treelets and are the smallest in stature of any neotropical Meliosma. Three of them are also among the smallest-leaved species of the genus; the fourth is a large-leaved pachycaul treelet.