Myrobalan

Grows wild in sub-himalayan tracts from Rawalpindi to eastwards. The wood is not very durable and the fruit is used in dyeing and tanning.

A large deciduous tree, 12-50 m tall with ashy bark, often with a bluish ting. Leaves alternate or fascicled at the end of branches, elliptic or elliptic obovate, alternate at both ends, puberoulous when young, glabrous on maturity, coriaceous, dotted, entire, acute or acuminate or rounded 8-20 x 7.5-15 cm, petiole 2.15 cm long, eglandular. Spikes axillary, loosely arranged, 5-15 cm long with pubescent floral axis. Flowers greenish yellow, 5-6 mm across, sessile, upper flowers of the spike male, lower flowers bisexual; bracteoles minute caducous. Hypanthium 2-2.5 mm long, densly tomentose outside, densly villous with long brown hairs inside, expanded upward in 5 recurved, triangular calyx lobes, lobes c 1.5 mm long. Stamens 3-4 mm long, anthers c. 1 mm long inserted on the hypanthium, epigynous. Disc intrastaminal, densly hairy. Style glabrous, fulvous, c. 4 mm long, ovary c. 2 mm long. Fruit obovoid 1.5-2.5 cm in diameter, covered with minute pale pubescence, stone very thick, indistinctly 5 angled.

Trees deciduous, to 35 m tall; trunk to 1 m d.b.h., with large buttresses. Bark gray, longitudinally ridged. Branchlets with conspicuous, spirally ascending leaf scars. Leaves spiraled, crowded into pseudowhorls at apices of branchlets; petiole 3-9 cm, glabrous but ferruginous tomentose when young, especially at base, with 2 glands above middle; leaf blade glossy, obovate, 18-26 × 6-12 cm, both surfaces glabrous except ferruginous tomentose when young, base obtuse-rounded or attenuate, apex obtuse or mucronate; lateral veins in 5-8 pairs. Inflorescences axillary, simple spikes, 5-18 cm, often grouped at branchlet apex and forming a panicle; axis densely ferruginous tomentose. Calyx tube distally shallowly cupular, 4-5 mm, abaxially tomentose, adaxially long villous; lobes 5. Stamens 10, exserted, 4-5 mm. Fruit shortly stipitate, subglobose to broadly ellipsoid or ovoid, weakly to strongly 5-ridged, 2-3 × 1.8-2.5 cm, densely and finely velutinous or sericeous; stipe ca. 2 mm. Fl. Mar-Apr, fr. May-Jul. 2n = 48.

Nepal, India, Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Indo-China, Malaysia.

Distribution: Ceylon, Burma, Indo-china, Siam, Malayan peninsula, India and Pakistan.

S Yunnan [Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam; N Australia; introduced in E Africa].

300-1100 m

Scattered forests, sunny mountain slopes, one of the upper layer trees of stream valleys and lower seasonal rain forests; 500-1400 m.

Myrobalanus bellirica Gaertner, Fruct. Sem. Pl. 2: 90. 1790 ["bellirina"]; M. laurinoides (Teijsmann & Binnendijk) Kuntze; Terminalia attenuata Edgeworth; T. bellirica var. laurinoides (Teijsmann & Binnendijk) C. B. Clarke; T. eglandulosa Roxburgh ex C. B. Clarke; T. gella Dalzell; T. laurinoides Teijsmann & Binnendijk; T. punctata Roth.