Category: I

Ixora coccinea L. (RUBIACEAE)

Common names
Kannada & Tulu: Kepula.
Malayalam: Thetti, Techi.
Sanskrit: Bandhuka, Raktaka.
Tamil: Sinduram, Thetti.
Telugu: Koranan, Mankana.

Description: A large shrub. Leaves opposite, oblong or elliptic, 5-10 x 3-6 cm, rounded or subcordate at base, obtuse or shortly acute at apex, coriaceous, pale when dry; main nerves 8-12 pairs. Flowers in dense sessile or very shortly peduncled corymbiform cymes, bright scarlet. Calyx tube short, lobes 4, glabrous, green. Corolla tube 2.5 – 4 cm long, lobes 4, scarlet. Stamens 4, on the mouth of the corolla. The ovary is 2-locular, featuring a filiform style and a fusiform stigma. The fruit is a drupe, globose, with a diameter of about 1 cm, smooth, and adorned with calyx-teeth, appearing purple or red upon ripening.

Flowering & Fruiting : Throughout the year.

Distribution: India: Western Peninsula, in forest lands at low elevations near the sea. Sri Lanka.

Uses: Fruit edible. The wood is hard, tough, durable and suitable for tool handles. Often cultivated in gardens throughout India for ornament. Root stomachic, sedative, astringent, antiseptic, used in loss of appetite, hiccup, diarrhoea, dysentery, applied to sores and chronic ulcers; flower given in dysentery, leucorrhoea, dysmenorrhoea, haemoptysis and catarrhal bronchitis, decoction used in eye troubles and as a vulnerary.

Ixora brachiata Roxb. (RUBIACEAE)

Common name
Tulu: Koraji.

Description: Small trees, 10-12 m tall with smooth grey bark. Leaves elliptic, oblong or lanceolate, 8-15 x 3-7 cm, attenuated or narrowed at base, obtuse at apex, pale when dry, glabrous; petiole, ca 2 cm long. Flowers in 9-10 cm long terminal trichotomously branched corymbose cymes, white, scented. Calyx short, reduced to 4 minute lobes. Corolla lobes 4, white. Stamens 4, inserted at the mouth of corolla tube; filaments short. The ovary is 2-locular, and the style is adorned with long white hairs, culminating in a fusiform stigma. The fruit is a smooth, purplish-black, globose berry, measuring about 1 cm in diameter. It contains 2 seeds that are hemispherical and approximately 4-5 mm long.

Flowering & Fruiting: November – March.

Distribution: India: In the evergreen and semi-evergreen forests of Western Ghats to Travancore at low elevations. Endemic.

Uses: Fruits edible. The wood is hard and used as tool handles.

Ilex malabarica Beddome (AQUIFOLIACEAE)

Description: Trees up to 12 m tall. Leaves elliptic- oblong, up to 14 x 4 cm, rounded at base, acute at apex, margin, entire or rarely toothed near apex. Male flowers in short panicles of umbels. Female flowers solitary or fascicled. Calyx usually 6-lobed, ciliolate. The corolla has 4-6 orbicular lobes, ciliolate, and fused at the base. There are 4-6 stamens. The drupes are approximately 3 mm in diameter, depressed globose, puberulous, 6-celled, red, and capped with a persistent stigma.

Flowering & Fruiting: December – May

Distribution: India: Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Endemic.