Schefflera venulosa (Wight & Arn.) Harms (ARALIACEAE)
Description: Large stragglers/climbing glabrous shrubs with grey shining bark. Leaves digitate or palmately compound, crowded at the ends of branchlets; leaflets 3-7 (commonly 5) elliptic-oblong or elliptic-ovate, 7-19 x 5-9 cm rounded at base, acuminate at apex, coriaceous, glabrous; petioles 7-20 cm long, stout; petiolules 2.5-5 cm long; stipules connate. Flowers in ca 25 cm long terminal branched panicles, with a number of stalked 8-12 flowered umbellules along a glabrous purple rachis. Calyx truncate, lobes 5. Petals 5, greenish-white. There are 5 stamens, short-filamented and inserted around the disc; the disc is either concave or conical. The ovary is 5-locular, with a short or absent style and a sessile stigma. The fruit is a subglobose, 5-angled drupe, approximately 6 mm in length, and brownish-black. The seeds, numbering 5, are laterally compressed.
Flowering & Fruiting: March – June.
Distribution: India: Throughout. Common in moist deciduous to evergreen forests of Western Ghats. Indo-china, Myanmar, Malaya, Tropical Australia.
