General Characters

shrub or tree that can grow from 5 to 15 metres tall, exceptionally to 20 metres[

Other Characters

Heartwood reddish, darkening to a deep warm brown on exposure, usually sharply demarcated from the narrow, buff-coloured to silver-grey sapwood. Grain straight or slightly interlocked. Texture fine and even. Wood with darker streaks producing attractive watered-silk figure on tangential surfaces. Growth rings distinct or indistinct.Bark: thin, smooth, scaly with irregular flakes, whitish to yellow-brown, inner bark reddish pink.

Features of Flower

Inflorescence: an axillary thyrse up to 6 cm long, often forked with indistinct main axis.Flowers functionally unisexual, regular, 4-merous; pedicel 3–9 mm long, thickened near the calyx; calyx lobed to about the middle, lobes 1–3 mm long; petals free, oblong, 3.5–6.5 mm × 2–3 mm, creamy-white or pinkish; stamens 8, united into a tube 2–3.5 mm in diameter; disk well developed, 8-lobed, red; ovary superior, 4-celled, style short and thick, stigma large.

Features of Fruits

Fruit a globose, pendulous, woody capsule 12–25 cm in diameter, weighing up to 3 kg, tardily dehiscing by 4 valves from apex, 6–20-seeded. Seeds: irregularly tetrahedral, up to 6 cm long, brown, with a corky seedcoat. Seedling with hypogeal germination, initially with scale leaves, first leaves simple.

Leaf Arrangment

Leaves alternate, paripinnately compound, with 1–2(–3) pairs of leaflets; stipules absent; petiole and rachis up to 12 cm long; petiolules 2–11 mm long, thickened; leaflets elliptical or obovate, 4–12 cm × 2–6 cm, base cuneate, apex rounded, entire, leathery.

Distribution

Restricted to few location in the south and west coasts.Highest number of tree are found in Pambala area of the Chilaw lagoon

Range

Eastern tropical Africa, throughout southeast Asia to Australia and the Pacific Islands.

Type of Roots

branched ribbon-like surface roots