Description: Deciduous dioecious trees, to 45 m high, bole buttressed; bark 10 mm thick, greyish-white, smooth, tuberculate-lenticellate; blaze dull yellow. Leaves simple, alternate, exstipulate, crowded at the apex of branchlets; petiole 5-15 cm long, slender, tomentose; lamina 7.5-20 x 5-12 cm, orbicular-ovate or broadly ovate, base cordate, apex acute-acuminate, margin glandular-serrate, coriaceous, glabrous above, densely tomentose beneath; nerves 3-5 from base, palmate, prominent, lateral nerves 4-9 pairs, pinnate, prominent, intercostae scalariform, prominent. Flowers unisexual, yellowish-green; female flowers sessile, in spicate pendulous panicles; male flowers subsessile, in pubescent panicles; male flowers: 4 mm across, calyx tube very short; lobes 4, ovate, united at base; petals absent; stamens 4, opposite the calyx lobes, inserted around a flat central disc; pistillode rudimentary; female flowers: 4 x 3 mm; calyx connate with the ovary, 4-gonous; lobes 4, short; petals absent; staminodes absent; ovary inferior, 1-celled, ovules numerous on 4 parietal placentae; styles 4, subulate; stigmas club shaped. Fruit a capsule, 5-6 mm long, urceolate, faintly 8-ribbed, glandular, crowned by persistent calyx segments, opening at top; seeds minute, brown.

Habitat: Evergreen, semi-evergreen and moist deciduous forests, also in the plains

Distribution: Paleotropics; in the Western Ghats- South and Central Sahyadris.

Uses:  Folk medicine, Siddha