FoI
East-Indian Almond
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East-Indian Almond
E Native Photo: Saroj Kasaju
Common name: East-Indian Almond • Nepali: पानी साज Pani saaj • Sanskrit: Kakubha • Mizo: Char
Botanical name: Terminalia myriocarpa    Family: Combretaceae (Rangoon creeper family)
Synonyms: Myrobalanus myriocarpa, Pentaptera saja, Terminalia saja

East-Indian Almond is a tree up to 20 m tall, with bark brownish black, longitudinally peeling; branches spreading, forming tiers; branchlets densely brownish yellow woolly near tip, densely covered with prominent leaf scars. Leaves are simple, alternate, crowded into pseudo-whorls at tips of branchlets; leaf-stalk about 0.5-2 cm, stout, woolly; blade about 12-30 × 8-15 cm, obovate to inverted-lanceshaped, narrow at base, blunt or with a short sharp point at tip, entire, both surfaces hairless, secondary nerves 10-12 pairs. Flowers are borne in simple, long, slender spikes, about 15-20 cm, numerous flowered, in leaf-axils, axis shortly white woolly. Flowers are fragrant; sepal-cup tube about 7-8 mm, distally cup-shaped, below white woolly, densely so on ovary, sparsely so on cup-shaped part, above hairless; lobes 5; stamens 10, about 2-3 mm, protruding. Fruit is about 3-5.5 x 2-3.5 cm, red or blackish green when ripe, ellipsoid, slightly to strongly compressed, strongly 2-ridged to narrowly 2-winged. East-Indian Almond is found in the Himalayas, from Nepal to Bhutan, NE India, Burma, Thailand, Indo-China, W. China, N. Sumatra, at altitudes of 600-2100 m. Flowering: August-September.

Identification credit: Saroj Kasaju Photographed in Kalimpong, West Bengal.

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