Botanical Name: Hardwickia binata Roxb.
Tamil Name: Aacha
Sanskrit Name: Anjan
English Name: Indian Black Wood
M. Subramanian
Project Officer
C.P.R. Environmental Education Centre
Chennai
Habitat
Gregarious deciduous trees, bark dark brown, rough, with irregular cracks; branchlets slender, drooping. Leaves alternate, 2-foliate; stipules small, lateral, cauducous; rachis 8-75 mm long, slender, swollen at base and at tip, glabrous, estipellate; lamina 2-6 x0.9-3.5 cm, sessile, with a minute bristle in between, obliquely ovate or obliquely oblong-ovate, base obliquely acute, apex obtuse, margin entire, glabrous, coriaceous; nerves 4-5 from base, arcuate, slender, prominent, inter-costae reticulate, prominent. Flowers bisexual, greenish-yellow, in lax racemose panicles; bracts minute; bracteoles scale like; calyx tube scarcely any; lobes usually 5, orbicular, petalloid, round the small basal disc, much imbricate; petals 0; stamens 10, alternately longer and shorter; filaments filiform; anthers versatile; ovary half inferior, sessile, free, ovules 2; style filiform, stigma large, peltate. Fruit a pod, 50-80 x 10-12 mm, oblong-lanceolate, the seed at the apex where the pod dehisces, the base samaroid; seed pendulous, obovate, compressed, 2-furrowed. (https://Indiabiodiversity.org/).