647

Myristica malabarica Lam.

Family	:	Myristicaceae
Local name	:	English -Malabar nutmeg                                                               Malayalam - Ponnampoovu
Flowering and fruiting period	:	January-September
Distribution	:	Western Ghats
Distribution in Kerala	:	Alappuzha, Kollam, Idukki, Pathanamthitta, Malappuram, Palakkad, Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode, Thrissur, Wayanad, Kannur
Habitat	:	Evergreen and swamp forests
IUCN Status	:	Vulnerable
Uses	:	Traditionally used as medicine and spices in food. The aril is used as febrifuge, cooling, expectorant. In Ayurveda, aril is used for many conditions related to vata such as fever, bronchitis, cough and burning sensation.
Key Botanical characters: Dioecious trees, height to 20 m tall; bark greenish-black, smooth, tuberculate-lenticellate; exudation deep red; branchlets glabrous. Leaves simple, alternate, distichous, elliptic or elliptic-oblong. Flowers unisexual, white; male in cymes, axillary or from the old axils below the leaves, generally cymosely branched, rarely simple. Male flowers: more numerous than in female and smaller, umbelled at the apex of branchlets; perianthurceolate, minutely puberulous outside, glabrous inside, 3-4 cleft at apex; staminal column stalked, slightly produces above the anthers, pubescent; anthers 10-15, linear. Female flowers: slightly larger than male peduncle generally simple with 3 umbelled pedicels at the apex, rarely once branched and bearing 5-6 flowers; bracteole forming a narrow linear cup round the base of the perianth; ovary superior, sessile, globose, hairy, stigma 2 clefted, glabrous.