Terminalia arjuna (Roxb. ex DC.) Wight & Arn. (COMBRETACEAE)
Common names
Kannada: Bili mathi.
Malayalam: Vella marutu.
Sanskrit: Arjuna, Dhananjaya.
Tamil: Vellamarda, Kula maruthu.
Telugu: Tittu maddi.
Description: Large deciduous trees up to 25 m tall; bark smooth, greenish white, peding off in large flat pieces; young parts with yellowish-brown hairs. Leaves usually sub-opposite, elliptic-lanceolate or elliptic-oblong, up to 15 x 7 cm, rounded or cordate at base, acute or obtusely acuminate at apex, pale brown beneath, slightly crenate-serrate; petioles ca 1 cm long with 1 or usually 2 prominent glands at the top immediately below the leaves. Flowers in panicled spikes yellowish. Calyx broadly companulate, lobes 5. Petals 0. Disc 5-lobed, clothed with villous hairs. Stamens 10, 2-seriate, much exserted. The ovary is inferior and 1-locular. The fruit is a drupe, ovoid or obovoid-oblong, measuring up to 5 x 2.5 cm. It is fibrous-woody, dark brown, and adorned with five hard, projecting wings. The seed is solitary.
Flowering & Fruiting : March – May.
Distribution: India: Almost throughout. Common in deciduous forests of Western Ghats and W. Coast on the banks of rivers and streams. Sri Lanka.
Uses: The wood is brown, variegated with darker streaks, very hard and is employed for carts, agricultural implements, water-troughs, boat building, solid cart-wheels, plywood, house-building, water-traps, masks, electric poles, tool-handles, sleepers, jetty-piles, as mine-props etc. Bark styptic, antidysenteric, astringent, antiasthmatic, febrifuge, expectorant, antibilious, cardiotonic, aphrodisiac, diuretic, used in fractures, ulcers, intoxication, urinary discharges, strangury, anaemia, excessive perspiration, tumours, leucoderma, rectifying false presentation of foetus; leaf used in earache; fruit deobstruent; bark and fruit tonic. The bark is extensively used for tanning. The leaves are fed to tasar silkworms.