Choerospondias axillaris
| Choerospondias axillaris | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| (unranked): | Angiosperms |
| (unranked): | Eudicots |
| (unranked): | Rosids |
| Order: | Sapindales |
| Family: | Anacardiaceae |
| Genus: | Choerospondias |
| Species: | C. axillaris |
| Binomial name | |
| Choerospondias axillaris (Roxb.) B.L.Burtt & A.W.Hill |
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Choerospondias axillaris, known as Lapsi लप्सी in Nepali also known in English as the "Nepali hog plum" and 南酸枣 in Mandarin (nan2 suan1 zao3), is a tree in the family Anacardiaceae. It is known as Lepchipoma in Assamese.[citation needed] It is native to much of Asia from China to India to Japan. Its fruit is about 3 centimeters long and has a soft whitish sour flesh and green to yellow skin. The fruit is made into pickles, fruit tarts, and sour, spicy candy in Nepal. The tree has long been cultivated in rural Nepal for its fruit.[1] The fruit is nutritious and has a price comparable to the mandarin orange on the Nepalese market.[1]
This is a deciduous tree growing up to 20 meters tall. The smaller branches are purple-brown in color. The compound leaves are up to 40 centimeters long and divided into 3 to 6 papery oval leaflets each up to 12 by 4.5 centimeters. The tree is dioecious, with male and female trees producing different types of inflorescence. Male flowers occur in long clusters and have curving, brown-veined petals about 3 millimeters long. Female flowers are solitary in leaf axils at the tips of branches. They are larger than the male flowers and yield the edible drupe. The fallen fruits are consumed and dispersed by sambar and barking deer.[2][3]
Besides fruit, the tree yields valuable wood and hard seeds which are burned for fuel, and has parts used medicinally in Vietnam.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Poudel, K. C. (2003). Domestication of Lapsi Choerospondias axillaris (Roxb.) B.L. Burtt & A.W. Hill for fruit production in the middle mountain agroforestry systems of Nepal. Himalayan Journal of Sciences 1:1 55-58.
- ^ Brodie JF; OE Helmy; WY Brockelman & JL Maron (2009). "Functional differences within a guild of tropical mammalian frugivores". Ecology 90 (3): 688–698. http://dbs.umt.edu/research_labs/maronlab/documents/BrodieetalEcology2009.pdf.
- ^ Chen, J., Deng, X.B., Bai, Z.L., Yang, Q., Chen, G.Q., Liu, Y. and Liu, Z.Q. (2002). Fruit characteristics and Muntiacus muntjac vaginalis (Muntjac) visits to individual plants of Choerospondias axillaris. Biotropica 33: 718-722.
[edit] External links
This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.
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