Buchanania lanzan Spreng.

കുളമാവ്

Family : ANACARDIACEAE

Synonym : Buchanania latifolia Roxb.

Common Names : Kalamavu, Moongapezhu, Mungapera, Mural, Nuruvei, Nuramaram, Nooramaram, Padacheru, Priyalam, Almondette tree, Cheronjee, Cuddapah almond

Flowering Period : January-April

Distribution : India and Myanmar

Habitat : Moist deciduous, dry deciduous and semi-evergreen forests

Uses : Seeds edible - raw or cooked. An excellent flavour, somewhat reminiscent of almonds or pistachios. Eaten as a dessert seed and also used in sweetmeats. In some parts of India the dried fruit and seed are baked together to make a sort of bread. The seed contains about 50% oil. Fruit - a pleasant, sweetish, subacid flavour. The gum from the tree is used against leprosy in traditional medicine. The roots are acrid, astringent, cooling, depurative and constipating. They are useful in the treatment of diarrhoea. The leaves are used in the treatment of skin diseases. The fruits are used in treating coughs and asthma. The bark is used in tanning.

Key Characters :

Subdeciduous trees, to 18 m high, bark 10-12 mm thick, surface black or dark brown, rough, tessellate the cracks being deep and narrow, some what resembling crocodile hide; blaze red. Leaves simple, alternate, estipulate; petiole 12-22 mm, stout, glabrous; lamina 10-23.5 x 5-12 cm, broadly oblong, base round or acute, apex obtuse or emarginate, margin entire, glabrous above and densely tomentose beneath, coriaceous; lateral nerves 10-20 pairs, pinnate, prominent, pubescent, secondary laterals prominent, intercostae reticulate, prominent. Flowers bisexual, greenish-white, sessile, in pubescent terminal and axillary panicles; calyx lobes 5, persistent; petals 5, oblong, reflexed, pilose; stamens 10, inserted at the base of fleshy disc; filaments free, glabrous; disc cupular, 5 lobed, pilose; carpels 5-6, free, superior, tomentose, 4 reduced to thread like processes, one fertile, ovule one, pendulous; style lateral; stigma truncate. Fruit a drupe, 10-13 x 8 mm, oblong, laterally compressed, black; stone hard, 2 valved; seed one.