Bio Diversity Park

Common Name : Indian Ash Tree, Wodier

Hindi Name : मोहिन | Scientific Name : Lannea coromandelica
Family : Anacardiaceae
Uses : The leaves are used in the Garo, Pahan, and Teli tribal communities of Bangladesh as a traditional medicinal plant to treat hepatitis, diabetes, ulcers, heart disease, and dysentery. Young leaves and sprouts - raw or cooked. Eaten as a vegetable. Eaten as a lalab (a vegetable salad served with sambal) with rice. The gum obtained from the trunk is often used in confectionery. The powdered bark is used as flavouring. The bark and the leaves are used as medicine. The plant can be grown as a hedge. It is easily propagated by cuttings and so can be grown as a living fence. The bark contains tannins. It is used for the impregnation of fishnets. A soluble resin, called 'Jingan gum' is obtained from the stems. It is used for calico printing; as a size for paper; for mixing with lime when whitewashing; protecting nets etc. It is obtained by making shallow, short cuts all over the bark. Especially after injuries of the bark and trimmings, masses of glassy-white exudate of hardening gum appear - which may give leafless trees an eerie appearance. A good quality gum. The gum is of inferior quality. The bark yields a coarse cordage fibre. It is used for spear shafts, scabbards, wheel-spokes, oil presses, grain pounders etc. The wood is used for fuel.
Native: Indian Subcontinent to China (S. Yunnan to SW. Guangdong) and Indo-China.
General Description:

It is a deciduous tree, growing up to 14 m tall and grows primarily in the seasonally dry tropical biome. Branchlets are minutely covered with starry hairs. Alternately arranged leaves are pinnate, with a single terminal leaflet (pinnae) at the end. The spine carrying the leaflets is up to 7 cm long. Leaflets are usually 5, each laterals opposite, ovate, base rounded, densely velvet-hairy when young. Flowers are unisexual, greenish, the male in compound and female in simple racemes. Sepals 4, about 1 mm long, broad ovate. Petals 4, 2 mm long, oblong, green yellow. Fruit is ovoid, compressed, in panicles, at the end of leafless branches. Flowering: January-March.