Description

A large handsome tree of the evergreen rain-forest, to 20 m high, bole 10 m by 1.6 m diameter; of northeastern India, Assam, Burma, Malaya, Java and Celibes. It has been introduced into W Africa (as E. sphaericus Schum, 8; and as E. ganitrus Roxb., Sierra Leone, 4, but FWTA ed. 2 does not name any species, nor locality, 6).The tree when grown standing on its own has a nicely shaped dense crown. It is sometimes cultivated in India as an ornamental (9). Its dispersal in Malaya is thought to be under man’s agency, and it has been rated there as a good shade-tree (3).The wood is particularly white, often shining, straight-grained, strong, tough but not durable (3, 5), though it is suitable for light carpentry.The fruit is bright blue, a drupe 1–2½ cm across, the flesh greenish yellow, sour and edible (1, 3, 9). It has use in Indian medicine for mental disorders, epilepsy, hypertension, asthma and liver diseases (8, 9). Extract of the flesh is reported to have a depressing effect on the central nervous system, and a potentiation of hypnosis and analgesia. It is cardio-stimulant and smooth muscle-relaxant (8).The fruit contains a stone which is elegantly tuberculed, marked with five vertical grooves (2). When cleaned of the flesh and polished, the stones are used in India as necklaces, bracelets and other ornaments, sometimes stained, sometimes set in gold (9). They are particularly important in rosaries worn by Hindu mendicants, followers of Siva, as they afford assistance to the attainment of Heaven and Siva’s company. Such rosaries contain 32 or 64 stones (7) or 101 representing the number of eyes of Siva (3). A century ago there was a brisk trade in the stones from Singapore and Java to India, and Chinese in Indonesia devised a system of ring-barking their cultivated trees to obtain fruit of reduced size containing seed the size the market favoured (3).