Sterculia villosa Roxb. ex Smith 

വാക

Family : STERCULIACEAE

Synonym :

Sterculia armata Mast.

Common Names : Vakka, Vakkanarumaram

Flowering Period : February-April

Distribution : South Asia and Myanmar

Habitat : Moist deciduous forests

Uses : The powdered root is mixed with rice flour and used to prepare a bread-like doughnut. A gum obtained from the bark is used as a substitute for gum tragacanth in confectionery etc. A coarse but very strong fibre is obtained from the bark. The bast, or rather all the layers of the bark, can be stripped from the bottom to the top of the tree with the greatest facility. A fine, pliable rope is made from the inner layers, while the outer ones yield a coarse rope, which is strong and durable and little injured by water.

Key Characters :

Deciduous trees, to 10 m high, bark pale-brown, smooth with small corky warts; branches horizontal and whorled. Leaves simple, palmately 5-7 lobed, alternate, crowded at the end of branchlets, 6.5-45 x 9-45 cm, lobes oblong-ovate or ovate, apex acuminate or caudate-acuminate, base cordate, margin entire, glabrous above and downy beneath, coriaceous; 5-7-ribbed from the base, palmate, prominent, lateral nerves 4-8, parallel, prominent, intercostae subscalariform-reticulate, prominent; petioles 7-25 cm long, stout, swollen at base, pubescent; stipules free, lateral, cauducous. Flowers polygamous, cream-coloured, 10-12 mm across, in long drooping panicles. Calyx campanulate, pink, downy outside, glabrous within, divided to the middle, lobes 5, oblong-lanceolate, acute. Petals absent. Male flowers: staminal column recurved; anthers 10, along the rim of staminal column, column hairy at apex; female flowers; carpels 5, free, strigose with stellate hairs; gynophore stout, cylindric; style stout, hairy, deflexed; staminodes on a ring beneath the ovary. Fruit an aggregate of 2-7 follicles, each 3.5-7.5 cm long, brown, tomentose; seeds many, black, smooth.