Tiikki – Tectona grandis

Bark is grayish brown, distinctly fibrous with shallow, longitudinal fissures. Branchlets are gray to grayish brown, 4-angled, yellowish to grayish brown stellate tomentose. Leaves are ovate-elliptic to ovate, 15-45 cm long by 8-23 cm wide (young leaves up to 1 m long), with entire margins and acuminate to obtuse apices. Petioles are robust, 2-4 cm long. Leaf blades are papery, shiny and rough above, grayish brown to yellowish brown tomentose below, and vein network is clear. Fragrant flowers are bisexual, regular, about 8 mm across, 5-7-merous, arranged in 25-70 cm long by 30 cm wide panicles found on the topmost branches in the unshaded part of the crown. Calyx is shortly lobed, persistent, with white stellate hairs. Corolla is white or mauve, tube is 2.5-3 mm long; lobes 2 mm wide, obtuse, spreading or reflexed. Stamens are inserted at the base of the corolla tube. Style is 3-4 mm, slender, stigma 2-lobed. Ovary is superior. Fruit is a globose drupe 1-1.5 cm in diameter, with 4 chambers, hard and woody, densely tomentose, enclosed in an inflated, bladder-like covering (=calyx that has continued to grow after flowering). Each fruit contains 0-4 ovoid seeds, which are ca. 6 mm × 4 mm and without endosperm.