Diospyros malabarica (Desr.) Kostel.

Dioecious trees, bark black with greenish tinge flaking off in thick scales; branchlets glabrous. Leaves simple, alternate, distichous, estipulate; petiole 8-12 mm long, stout, grooved above; lamina 13-25 x 4-7 cm, oblong or oblong-lanceolate, base round, obtuse or acute, apex acute or obtuse, margin entire, glabrous and shining, coriaceous; lateral nerves 6-8 pairs, pinnate, prominent, intercostae reticulate, prominent, pellucid. Flowers unisexual, pale yellow; male flowers: 2-7 in axillary, drooping cymes, peduncle short; calyx 6.35 mm long, lobes 4, broadly ovate, pubescent inside, margin ciliate; corolla 1 cm long, campanulate; lobes 4, ovate, round at apex, with a pubescent patch on the back of each lobe, imbricate; stamens usually 40, in pairs, inserted at the base of the corolla tube or on the receptacle beneath it; filaments hairy; anthers nearly equal, linear with a line of hairs up the middle; pistillode fleshy; female flowers: 2.5 cm across, usually solitary, axillary, drooping; pedicels very short; calyx deeply divided; lobes 4, appressed-pubescent, ovate, acute, thick; corolla 12.5 mm long, campanulate, deeply divided; lobes 4, ovate, obtuse, thick-fleshy, appressed hairy on the back, recurved; staminodes 4-12, hairy, inserted at the base of corolla tube; ovary superior, globose, 8-celled, ovule 1-in each cell, subsessile, glandular-hairy without; style 4; stigma lobed, undulate. Fruit a berry, 5-6 cm across, subglobose, yellow, covered with a rusty easily detachable scruffiness; calyx much enlarged, green, woody, spreading reflexed, covered with rusty tomentum; pericarp thin, pulp viscid and glutinous; seeds 4-8, flattened, reddish-brown.