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Ficus exasperata Vahl.
Synonym
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Ficus asperrima
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Family
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Moraceae
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Local name
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English - Sandpaper tree
Malayalam – Parakam
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Flowering
and fruiting period
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February-April
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Distribution
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East Africa, Arabia, India and Sri Lanka
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Distribution
in kerala
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All Districts
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Habitat
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Moist deciduous
forests, also in the plains
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IUCN Status
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LC
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Uses
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Widely used as a source of sandpaper and
as a valuable medicinal plant.
The extracts from the tree used to treat as anti-ulcer, hypotensive,
lipid-lowering, analgesic, anti-inflammatory and antipyretic activity
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Key Botanical Characters :.Deciduous trees, to 18 m high;; bark 5-6
mm thick, greenish-white, smooth, punctiformlenticellate, fibrous; exudation
watery; all parts coarsely and harshly scabrid with stout white hairs. Leaves
simple, laxly alternate spiral to opposite or subdistichous. Leaves of
saplings and coppice shoots often lobed. Flowers unisexual; inflorescence a
syconia, axillary, solitary, harshly scabrid; with 2-3 small scattered,
lateral bracts, sometimes more or less aggregated into a collar, body
subglobose or ellipsoid with scattered small lateral bracts,; internal
bristles copious, white, shorter than flowers; flowers of 4 kinds; male
flowers sessile, ostiolar, in 1-2 rings; tepals 3-6, oblong-spathulate, white
hairy; stamen 1;filament 0.5 mm; anther oblong, parallel; female flowers
sessile; tepals 4-7, linear-spathulate, white hairy; ovary superior, obovoid;
style filiform, lateral, puberulous, stigma clavate; gall flowers sessile to
pedicellatetepals 4-6, lanceolate, white hairy, ovary white, sessile, style
terminal, puberulous, stigma dilated. Syconium yellow or purple when ripe;
achene oblong, slightly keeled, reticulate.
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