Phyllanthus emblica
Family: EUPHORBIACEAE
Malayalam Name(s): Amalakam, Nelli
English name(s): Emblic myrobalan, Indian gooseberry
Habit: Tree
Flowering & Fruiting: July-February
Medicinal: Yes
Habitat: Dry and moist deciduous forests, also cultivated in the plains.
Description: Deciduous trees, to 15 m high, bark grey-brown, rough, irregularly flaking. Leaves simple, alternate, bifarious on short deciduous branchlets, closely overlapping, subsessile, 0.4-1.5 x 2-4 mm, oblong or linear-oblong, apex obtuse and shortly apiculate, base round, glabrous, membranous, nerves obscure; stipules minute, lateral, linear. Flowers unisexual, 2-3 mm across, greenish-yellow, densely clustered in leaf axils. Male flowers: tepals 6, oblanceolate, 1.5 mm, obtuse, stamens 3, anthers oblong, connate by their connectives; apiculate; disc glands 6. Female flowers: tepals 6, oblanceolate, obtuse; ovary superior, 1.5 mm, 3-celled; ovules 2 in each cell; styles 3, broadly fimbriate, recurved, stigmatiferous. Fruit a capsule 1.5-2.5 cm across, subglobose, dehiscing into 6 cocci, disc enlarged to give an appearance of fleshy yellowish-green, indehiscent berry.