Zanthoxylum rhetsa

 

Family: RUTACEAE

Malayalam Name(s): Kothumurikku, Mullilam

English name(s): Indian prickly ash

Habit: Tree

Flowering & Fruiting: March-November

Medicinal: Yes

Habitat: Evergreen and moist deciduous forests, also in the plains

Description: Deciduous trees, to 20 m high, bark 15-20 mm thick, brown, mottled with white, armed with conical prickles; outer bark dead, corky, pale yellow, inner bark sulphur yellow; branchlets woody, terete, sparsely prickly. Leaves imparipinnate, alternate, clustered at the tips of branchlets, estipulate; leaflets 13-23, opposite or subopposite, 6-19 x 3-6.5 cm, oblong, elliptic-oblong, oblong-ovate, apex acuminate or caudate-acuminate, base oblique, margin entire or crenate, glabrous, punctate, coriaceous; petiolule 1-5 mm long;rachis 30-45 cm long slightly grooved above when young, becoming cylindric on maturity, usually prickly, glabrous; lateral nerves 6-12 pairs, slender, pinnate, prominent; intercostae reticulate, faint. Flowers polygamous, greenish-yellow, 2-3 mm across, in terminal cymose panicles, peduncle and axis sometimes prickly; male flowers: sepals 4, ovate-triangular, fimbriate along margin, green; petals 4, free, elliptic-oblong, white or creamy yellow, valvate; stamens 4, anthers oblong, yellow; disc lobulate; pistillodes solitary; female flowers: sepals & petals as in male flowers; staminodes absent; disc pulvinate; ovary superior, 4-celled, ovules 2 in each cell; style eccentric; stigma truncate. Fruit a capsule, of 1-4 cocci, purplish, tubercled, aromatic; seeds globose, smooth, blue-black.

മലയാളത്തിൽ വായിക്കുവാൻ ഇവിടെ ക്ലിക്ക് ചെയ്യുക