Mastixia arborea - Malabar Gum Tree

Malabar Gum Tree is a tree up to 25 m tall, bark pale brown, mottled with dark brown; outer bark 2-3 mm thick, shallowly fissured with white blotches outside. Tree yields resinous gum that has camphory smell. The genus name Mastixia is probably in allusion to Mastic (Greek: Μαστίχα), a resin obtained from a certain tree. Leaves are simple, alternate, leaf-stalk 1-3 cm, slender, rusty-hairy when young; blade 6-19 x 2-8 cm, elliptic, elliptic-oblong, elliptic-obovate or obovate, base narrowed or wedge-shaped, tip tapering, margin entire, hairless, leathery; lateral nerves 4-10 pairs. Flowers are bisexual, yellowish-green, in branch-end corymb-like rusty woolly panicles. Lower bracts lanceshaped, upto 5 mm, thick, nearly hairless; bracteoles 2. Sepal-tube is bell-shaped, velvet-hairy, sepals 5, spreading, disc yellow, fleshy, shining, 4-5 lobed. Petals are 5, ovate, fleshy, with an apical notched but without median ridge, valvate; stamens 5, outside the disc, erect. Fruit is a drupe, cylindric-ovoid, about 3 cm long, smooth, greenish-purple, persistent disc and sepals prominent. Malabar Gum Tree is native to Western Ghats and Sri Lanka.