Habit : A large deciduous tree often with a short, sharp axillary spines and bark thin, grey smooth or rough with lenticels.
Leaves : Broadly elliptic, acute, obtuse or shortly acuminate, glabrous and shining, 5-nerved (the lateral pair often faint), base usually rounded, petiolate.
Numerous, greenish-white in colour with peduncles and pedicels are short, pubescent.
Calyx pubescent outside, lanceolate.
Corolla less than below 1.2 cm, having 5 lobes, oblong, acute, glabrous outside, tube cylindric, hairy inside below with glabrous throat.
Ovary and style glabrous.
Fruit :
Globose, slightly rough but shining, orange-red when ripe.
Seeds usually many, discoid, much compressed, concave on one side and convex on other, loathed on both side with fine, grey, silky hairs radiating from center.
Flowering and Fruiting Time : March - April
Significance :
Strychnine is obtained from the seeds which is exported in large quantities from India.
It is used as aromatic, also against stomachache, nervetonic, cholera, used as poultice on wounds with Maggots and ulcers.
It is also used in curing colic, respiratory and cardiac stimulant, dysentery, fever and dyspepsia.
Although the fruit pulp contains small quantity of strychnine, it is eaten voraciously by birds and natives in some localities.
Strychnine, also used in the distillation of country spirits to make them more potent.
The wood is not attacked by termites and is used in ploughs, axe handles etc.
