Digital Garden

Gluta travancorica Bedd.

ചെങ്കുറിഞ്ഞി

Family : Anacardiaceae

Synonym : No synonyms are recorded for this name.

Common Names : Chenkurinji, Thodappa, Red-Wood tree

Flowering Period : March-January

Distribution : Southern Western Ghats

Habitat : Evergreen forests

Uses : The heartwood is dark red; the sapwood light reddish-grey. The wood is very hard and close-grained, beautifully mottled with dark and light, i.e. black and orange, streaks. With its splendid colour and markings, this is one of the finest and most beautiful woods of India. It can be used for making furniture. A resinous exudate from the wood can cause severe skin irritation. The poisonous constituent of the resinous sap is volatile and will gradually disappear. For this reason, the timber of this tree must be dried and exposed for several years as it is otherwise dangerous to handle. Lacquered articles or furniture made from the dried timber may still be toxic to persons who are especially susceptible.

Key Characters :

Evergreen trees, to 35 m high, bark greyish-brown, smooth; blaze pink; exudation black, acrid. Leaves simple, alternate, crowded at the tips of branchlets, estipulate; petiole glabrous, winged; lamina elliptic-ovate; margin entire, glabrous, coriaceous. Flowers bisexual, cream coloured, in axillary and terminal panicles; calyx spathaceous, splitting irregularly; petals 4-6, inserted on the disc, imbricate; disc elongate, cylindric; stamens 4-6, inserted on the disc; filaments filiform; anthers dorsifixed; ovary obliquely ovoid, superior, apocarpous, sessile or stipitate, pubescent, 1-celled, 1-ovuled, pendulous; style lateral, filiform; stigma simple. Fruit a drupe, globose, brown.