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Saraca
asoca (Roxb.) de Wilde
Synonym : Jonesia asoca Roxb.
Family
: Caesalpinioideae
Local Names
: Ashokam, Asoka tree
Flowering
and fruiting period:
February – August
Distribution: India and Myanmar
Habitat: Evergreen forests,
also grown as ornamental tree in the plains
IUCN
status:
Vulnerable
Endemic: Yes
Uses: Sacred Indian plant,
Ayurvedic, ornamental. The juice obtained from boiling the bark is a cure for
some ailments of women, and a pulp of the blossoms is one of the remedies used
for dysentery
Key
Characters:
Saraca asoca are trees with bark
surface brown or brownish-black. Leaves paripinnate, alternate; leaflets
opposite, narrowly oblong, margin
entire. Flowers bisexual, yellow-orange or red, in dense sessile paniculate
corymbs. Calyx petalloid, cylindric; lobes 4, ovate-oblong, imbricate. Petals
0. Stamens 7 or 8, coloured; anthers versatile. Ovary half inferior, stipitate.
Fruit a pod, flat, oblong.
