Synonym: Buchanania lanzan; Buchanania latifolia.
English: Almondette; Chironji tree; Almondette; Calumpong nut; Cheronjee; Cuddapah almond; Hamilton mombin;
Hindi: Char; Achar; Chironji; Piyal.
Region: east Asia, southern China, India, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia.
Habitat: open and dry forests on poor soils; elevations of 100 to 900 metres; drier areas in the tropics and subtropics; grows well in full sun; tolerate considerable shade; most soils, including dry soils; avoids waterlogged areas; locally in clay soils; dry deciduous tropical forests; eroded ravine lands; clay soils.
Use: “chironji” seed as edible nut, pleasant sweetish acidic flavour.
Content: seeds with ± 50% oil.
Use: extensively harvested from the wild; seed, raw or cooked, excellent flavour like almonds or pistachios, as dessert, in sweetmeats; fruit, fresh or dried, with a pleasant, sweetish, subacid flavour, are baked with seed to make a sort of bread; seed, light yellow with a sweet flavour and pleasant aroma, as a substitute for almond or olive oil; trees for afforesting bare hill slopes; bark in tanning; gum in large, irregular pieces, partially soluble in water, for good mucilage, for adhesive; wood for firewood, charcoal; medicinal in Ayurveda and Unani systems.
BotanyTree; evergreen; deciduous; moderate-sized, up to 13 to 18 m tall.
Roots: acrid.
Stem: straight, cylindrical; up to 1.3 m girth; tomentose branches; bark is rough, dark grey, crocodile or black, with red blaze; fissured into prominent squares, 1 to 2 cm thick, reddish inside; wood greyish-brown, dark-coloured heartwood, moderately hard, poor quality.
Leaves: compound, 10 to 20 pairs of straight; oval; 12 to 25 long, 6 to 12 cm wide; tickly leathery; alternate; petiolate, very coriaceous; broadly oblong, blunt tip rounded base; petioles 12 mm long; panicles shorter than leaves, woolly or velvety; 10 to 20 pairs of straight parallel veins and are pubescent.
Inflorescence: axillary; pyramidal, terminal panicles.
Flowers: crowed; small; sessile; greenish white in colour; disc fleshy, 5-lobed;greenish white; flowering early spring, January to March.
Calyx: sepals 3 to 5; lobed; 1 mm long; ovate; apex obtuse.
Corolla: petals 4 to 5; 3 mm long; ovate; sub acute.
Androecium: stamens 10; a little shorter than the petals; filaments flattened; anthers about as long as the filaments.
Gynoecium: ovary has 5 to 6 free carpels, situated inside the disc, only 1 carpel fertile.
Fruits: drupes; ovoid or globoid obliquely lentiform; 8 to 15 mm long; green when immature and black at ripened stage; stone hard, 2-valved, each containing a single seed; hangs on the tree for quite a long while.
Seed: fairly small, ± 7 mm long.