Elaeagnus latifolia L. (ELAEAGNACEAE)
Common name
Kannada: Gunnamada patteballi.
Description: These are typically sizable, prickly climbing shrubs with young shoots covered in rough, rust-colored shiny scales, and their stems and branches are somewhat spiny. Leaves elliptic to obovate or elliptic-lanceolate, 4-10 x 2-5 cm, acute or rounded at base, rounded to acuminate at apex, chartaceous, green above, prominent silvery-white beneath; petioles 1-1.5 cm long. Flowers many in axillary clusters, silvery. Perianth tube cylindric to urceolate, lobes 4, stellately hairy inside. Stamens 4, inserted at the mouth of the perianth-tube; filaments slender, short. Ovary superior, unilocular; style erect, hairy; stigma simple. Fruit a drupe, ellipsoid, 2-3 cm long, 8 ribbed, with persistent calyx, pinkish or red with small whitish scabrous spots when ripe. Seed solitary, ca 1.8 cm long, erect, hard, shining.
Flowering & Fruiting: November – March.
Distribution: India: Throughout. Frequent in evergreen and semi-evergreen forests of Western Ghats and W. Coast. Sri Lanka, Malaya Islands, China.
Uses: The fruits with a subacrid flavour are edible. It makes excellent tarts and jellies. The wood is used as fuel. Flowers cardiotonic; flower and fruit astringent.