Manteliketapani – Terminalia catappa

Trunk is often buttressed at the base. Bark grey-brown, rough with age. Leaves are alternate, 15-30 cm long, simple, obovate, glossy green, leathery, clustered at the branch tips, with short petioles, changing to yellow, red or purplish before falling. Inflorescences are about 20 cm long racemes in the leaf axils in tips of branches. Flowers are unisexual (male and female flowers in the same tree in the same or different inflorescences), about 1 cm, greenish white, without petals. Stamens are 10-12,conspicuous. Fruit is a hard drupe, 7 x 3-5 cm, rounded and flattened, egg-shaped, with 2 ridges but no wings, green first, turning to brown or reddish when ripe. The cylindrical, oil-containing seed is 3-4 cm x 3-5 mm, encased in a tough, fibrous husk within a fleshy pericarp.