Diospyros ovalifolia Wt. - EBENACEAE

Vernacular names : Malayalam: Vedukkanari

English   Kannada   Malayalam   Tamil   

Botanical descriptions Ecology Distribution Literatures

Botanical descriptions :

Habit : Trees up to 12 m tall.
Branches and Branchlets : Young branches terete, sparse adpressed hairy.
Leaves : Leaves simple, alternate, distichous; petiole 0.5-1.0 cm long, canaliculate, glabrous; lamina 5-13 x 1.5-5 cm, usually narrow obovate, apex obtuse to rounded, base acute to cuneate, margin entire, coriaceous, glabrous, midrib canaliculate above; stout beneath; secondary_nerves 6-9 pairs; tertiary_nerves broadly reticulate.
Inflorescence / Flower : Flowers unisexual, dioecious; male flowers in axillary clusters usually on older branches, yellow; female flowers solitary or in clusters of 2-6, in leaf axils or on older branches.
Fruit and Seed : Berry, subsessile, globose, to 2 cm across; fruiting_calyx reflexed; seed 1.

Ecology :

Canopy trees in dry evergreen forests, up to 800 m.

Distribution :

Peninsular India Sri Lanka; in the Western_Ghats- leeward side of South Sahyadri.

Literatures :

Wight, Ic. t. 1227. 1848; Gamble, Fl. Madras 2: 777. 1993 (re. ed); Sasidharan, Biodiversity documentation for Kerala- Flowering Plants, part 6: 272. 2004; Singh, Monograph on Indian Diospyros L. (Persimmon, Ebony) Ebenaceae. 185. 2005; Saldanha, Fl. Karnataka 1: 340. 1996.

Top of the Page