Mangopuu – Mangifera indica

Trunk is stout, up to 120cm in diameter. Bark is brown, with many thin fissures, thick, becoming darker,rough and scaly or furrowed. Whitish latex exudes from cut twigs and a resin from cuts in the trunk. Leaves are alternate,simple, leathery, oblong, lanceolate or elliptic, 16-30 x 3-7 cm on flowering branches, longer on sterile branches. Inflorescence is up to 60 cm long, terminal, much-branched panicle, bearing numerous, small (5-10 mm) fragrant flowers, both male and hermaphrodite. Sepals and petals are 4-5, sepals greenish and hairy, petals yellowish or reddish. Stamens are 3-7, but only 1-2 are fertile. There is a conspicuous 5-lobed disc between the petals and stamens/ovary. Male flower is similar to the hermaphrodite flower but is without the pistil. Fruit is an irregularly egg-shaped and slightly compressed fleshy drupe, 8-12(-30) cm long, attached at the broadest end on a pendulous stalk. The fruit is smooth, greenish-yellow, sometimes tinged with red. The underlying yellow-orange flesh (mesocarp) varies in quality from soft, sweet, juicy and fibre-free to turpentine flavoured and fibrous. The single, compressed, ovoid seed, encased in woody, white, fibrous endocarp, is often polyembryonic.