A big tree, 36m tall with a girth of 1.6m. Bole is fissured and shows small bulk, 1m in height and with 30cm buttresses. Bark is fissured and gray. Inner bark is meat-red and laminated, and has a pepperish-garlic smell. Stems are glabrous and lenticelled. Leaves are paripinnate, spiral, and exstipulate. Rachis is 30cm long and holds 10–17 pairs of folioles. Petiolules are 1.2cm long. Blade is serrate, lanceolate, asymmetrical, and apiculate with a 1cm-long tail, and 12.7cm × 3.4–9cm × 2.5–12.2cm × 3–13cm × 3cm. Inflorescences are 70cm- to 1m-long panicles of tiny flowers pendant behind leafy stems. Flowers evoke a powerful sour smell detected 100ft away from the tree. Petals are white, flushed green, and 2–5mm long. Fruits are 2.3cm × 1cm, 5-partite dehiscent fusiform capsules, splitting into five valves around a pentagonal column. Seeds are winged at one end.

Astringent, carminative, febrifuge, ophthalmic and styptic (bark)

Plants For A Future database

Used to treat red spots on skin and as a remedy for gynecological troubles, including irregular menses (bark); to treat diarrhoea, chronic dysentery, flatulence, bloody stools, seminal emissions, leucorrhoea, metrorrhagia and gonorrhoea (decoction of bark); used to cool and to promote urination (powdered roots); chewed to stimulate digestion (young leaves).

Christophe Wiart. Medicinal Plants of Asia and the Pacific, P:202-203, CRC Press, June 2006.