English Lao
Botanical descriptions Habitat and ecology Distribution
| Diagnostic characters : | Large deciduous trees, usually buttressed, resinous exudates turning red. Leaves imparipinnate, alternate, leaflets alternate, glabrous, without glands or dots. Flowers white. Fruit is an ovoid pod looking like berry blackening when ripen grouped in panicle. Seeds covered with whitish pulp when young. |
| Habit : | Large deciduous tree, up to 35 m high, 80-100 cm in diameter. Branches ascending to the main trunk. |
| Trunk & bark : | Trunk straight, slightly buttressed at base. Bark smooth, lenticellate, slightly rugose, grey or whitish grey, inner bark brownish. |
| Branches and branchlets or twigs : | Twigs terete, glabrous, puberulent when young. |
| Exudates : | Transparent resinous exudates turning reddish. |
| Leaves : | Leaves compound, imparipinnate, alternate spiral, leaflets alternate, 4 -7 by 1.5 - 4.5 cm sized, ovate to elliptic, apex slightly acuminate, base rounded, slightly oblique, margin entire, glabrous on both sides. Midrib flat above, primary vein single, secondary veins oblique to the midrib, widely parallel, anastomosing near the margin, tertiary veins finely reticulate. Rachis 10 cm long. Stipule small, caducous. |
| Inflorescences or flowers : | Flowers white grouped in terminal or axillary panicle, bisexual, pedicel shorter than 5 mm, pubescent to glabrous. |
| Fruits : | Fruit is a pod, ovoid, slightly laterally compressed, 1.5 by 0.8-0.9 cm sized, finely pubescent to velvety, light green when young becoming black when mature. |
| Seeds : | One to two seeds per pod, longitudinally and finely striate, covered with whitish pulp when young, becoming reddish brown. |