Scientific Name
Other Names
Life Form
Family
Food - The fruit is made into pickles, fruit tarts, and sour, spicy candy. Wood - Construction: Wood used in construction. Cultural/Religious - It is also used in religious ceremonies as an offering.
Bhutan, Myanmar, China, India, Nepal
It grows in lowland, hill, and mountain forests at altitudes of 500-2000 m asl.
Prized for its fruits that are sour when unripe and sweet when mature. Is resilient and low-maintenance.
It is a deciduous trees grow up to 20 m tall.
Branchlets dark purplish brown, minutely pubescent to glabrous, lenticellate.
Petiole inflated at base, petiole and rachis minutely pubescent to glabrous; leaf blade 25-40 cm, imparipinnately compound, with 3-6 leaflets; leaflet petiolule slender, 2-5 mm, glabrous to minutely pubescent; leaflet blade ovate to ovate-lanceolate or oblong-ovate, 4-12 × 2-4.5 cm, papery, glabrous or abaxially with tufts of hair in vein axils, base ± oblique, broadly cuneate to rounded, entire or serrate at base, apex long acuminate, lateral veins 8-10 pairs, prominent on both surfaces, reticulate venation obscure.
It has separate male and female flowers. The tiny, male flowers cluster at branch tips, while the larger female flowers appear singly along the branches. Both have petals, but the male flowers have brownish veins and are more numerous.
Its fruit is about 3 centim long and has a soft whitish sour flesh and green to yellow skin.
Flowering: March-April