1433

 

Gomphandra coriacea Wight

Synonym	:	Platea coriacea (Wight) Thwaites
Family	:	Stemonuraceae
Local name	:	Malayalam-  Chottamaram
Flowering and fruiting period	:	December-March
Distribution	:	South India and Sri Lanka
Distribution in Kerala	:	Wayanad, Palakkad, Kottayam, Kozhikkode, Kollam, Idukki, Pathanamthitta, Malappuram, Thiruvananthapuram, Thrissur
Habitat	:	Evergreen forests and shola forests
Endemic/Exotic	:	Endemic to Western ghats and Sri lanka
Key botanical characters:  Trees, to 7 m high, bark dark grey, smooth; blaze yellow; branchlets green. Leaves simple, alternate, estipulate; petiole 5-15 mm long, slender, grooved above, glabrous; lamina 3-12 x 1.8-5 cm, elliptic, obovate or elliptic-obovate, base acute, apex obtuse, obtusely acute, acute or acuminate, margin entire, coriaceous; lateral nerves 3-7 pairs, pinnate, slender, faint, intercostae obscure. Flowers polygamo-dioecious, greenish-white, in leaf opposed cymes or rarely in axillary cymes; calyx minute, cup-shaped; lobes 4-5; corolla 4 mm long; lobes 4-5, acute, connate into a tube, lobes inflexed at apex; male flowers : stamens 4-5, exserted, free; filaments thick, fleshy often connate, usually with a tuft of club-shaped hairs on the back at the apex; anthers pendulous from the interior apex of the filaments, dehiscing longitudinally; disc thick, annular or 0; pistillode pubescent; female flowers : ovary superior, oblong, 1-celled, ovules 2; style conic; stigma small or discoid. Fruit a drupe, 15 x 8 mm, pale yellow, oblong-terete, crowned with the remains of persistent stigmas; endocarp wrinkled; seed pendulous, longitudinally surrounded by raphe.