| Type | Indigenous |
|---|---|
| Family | Lauraceae |
| Local Name | Karuva |
| Habit | Medium sized tree |
| Botanical Features | Trees, to 15 m high; bole thinly buttressed; bark 5 mm thick, greyish, smooth, with faint aniseed and clove smell, blaze dull red; branchlets thick, angular, glabrous or with a few, microscopically, appressed hairs. Apical bud small, densely and very minutely sericeous. Leaves simple, opposite and subopposite, estipulate; petiole 10-28 mm long, stout, glabrous; lamina 7-25 x 2-12 cm, ovate, elliptic-ovate or elliptic-lanceolate, base cuneate or decurrent into petiole, apex obtuse, margin entire, glabrous, shiny above, pale, minutely, smoothly and densely reticulate beneath, coriaceous; 3-5-ribbed from base, of which 2 middle arise from a little above the base, side ribs slender, fainting 2-3 cm below the leaf tip; intercostae scalariform, faint. Flowers bisexual, upto 7 mm long, white, sparsely to more densely minutely sericeous, in axillary few flowered stout, almost glabrous panicle upto 7 cm long; peduncle flattened, branchlets few, 1-2.5 cm long; pedicel upto 1 cm long, stout, obconic, microscopically sparsely appressed pilose; perianth tube 1-2 mm long, funnel shaped; tepals 6, 3-4 mm long, ovate-oblong, acute, sericeous inside; stamens 9 perfect, in 3 rows, 2-2.5 mm long, those of first and second row opposite the perianth lobes ; anthers oblong, 4-celled, longer than the broad; staminodes fourth row opposite the second row; ovary half inferior, ellipsoid; style 1.5-2 mm long, thick; stigma minute, peltate. Fruit a berry. |