Mangifera zeylanica

Mangifera zeylanica or “Sri Lanka wild mango” is a wild species of mango tree endemic to Sri Lanka. This stately tree is the tallest member of the mango genus, Mangifera, and one of the two tallest trees in the family Anacardiaceae. The mango fruits are edible and have an excellent taste. It is called "aetamba" (ඇටඹ) or "wal amba" in Sinhala and “kaddu-ma” in Tamil. The well-known British botanist and explorer Joseph Dalton Hooker first described the tree in 1876.

Large tree in Udawattakele Forest

Mangifera zeylanica
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Rosids
Order: Sapindales
Family: Anacardiaceae
Genus: Mangifera
Species:
M. zeylanica
Binomial name
Mangifera zeylanica
(Blume) Hook.f.
Flowering Mangifera zeylanica tree in Kurunegala.

Description

Mangifera zeylanica is a large, stately, slow growing, evergreen tree that can grow up to 35 meter tall.

The trunk is straight, up to 90 cm in diameter, and is free of buttresses. Bark in older trees is rough, deeply fissured, with strips 2–3 cm wide, and dark to light brown. The inner bark is orange brown. The wood is greyish white, soft, and coarsely grained.

The dark green leaves are stiffly coriaceous, glabrous, and emit a mango aroma when damaged. The leaves are scattered, partly aggregating at the end of twigs. In shape they are spathulate or obovate-oblong or oblanceolate, from 1.5 x 4 to 5 x 16 cm, usually 3 x 9 cm, tapering towards the base, with a rounded apex in adult trees and with a pointed 7–13 cm apex in saplings. The margins are slightly incurved and narrowly decurrent at the base along the petiole. The midrib is raised on both leaf surfaces. Nerves: Lateral nerves 7 to 14 pairs. Petiole slender, 1–3 cm.

Panicles glabrous, erect, up to 20 cm long, terminal. Flowers whitish and cream yellow coloured, 5–merous, 4 mm across, not glomerulate. Bracteoles lanceolate, minute, caducous. Pedicel slender, 1 mm. Petals twice as long as sepals. Sepals 5, ovate, acute, 2 x 1.5 mm. Petals 5, elliptic, 3.5 x 2 mm. Disc large, cushion-like, with 5 globose lobes. 1 fertile stamen (rarely 2), 2 mm long.

The ripe fruit is yellowish in colour and with a red flush. It has the shape of a mango, ovoid, slightly flattened, with a small beak, up to 6.5 x 5 x 4 cm, and a thin skin. When ripe, which is when it falls of the tree, it is very juicy and fluid with soft, thin, fibres. The yellow pulp has a pleasant sweet taste, but is slightly acid when unripe. Hard endocarp with longitudinal veins, 5 x 2.5 by 3 x 12 cm.

Distribution

It mainly grows in forests of the intermediate and wet zones up to 800 metres, but can also be found in the Dry Zone along waterways and in moist valley areas. It occurs at low population densities, scattered here and there in forests, and, like many native plants, is declining in unprotected areas.

Uses

The fruit is eaten by villagers. The soft wood has been used for making tea cases and the like. The tree is not cultivated, but could be used for crossing and improving mango varieties and as a rootstock.

gollark: They have 10nm Ice Lake mobile CPUs, at least.
gollark: They still haven't. So the best thing *shipping* is Ice Lake, which had better IPC but is also on their not-very-good 10nm process and has bad clocks, making it roughly as good as 14nm ones with worse architectures.
gollark: They added more cores, but Intel don't really have much better architectures. Unless they released Tiger Lake. I should check.
gollark: Sandy Bridge was 2011, and Intel is widely regarded as having not really done much since then until pretty recently.
gollark: I mean, I suppose it could maybe make sense if the original one was a bad dual-core and the new one is hexacore and they didn't run it long enough for it to thermally throttle horribly.

References
  1. World Conservation Monitoring Centre (1998). "Mangifera zeylanica". The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN. 1998: e.T31400A9630295. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.1998.RLTS.T31400A9630295.en. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.