The Not-So-Common Trees - Wild almond
Stinking yet beautiful
Called pinari in Tamil, the wild almond's botanical name is Sterculia foetida, a tell-tale name for it gives off a very offensive odour when in flower: Sterculia from a word meaning dung and foetida meaning stinking.
Deciduous and of striking looks, the tree is tall and straight with a transcendent appearance in March and April when it puts forth fresh, full foliage. A native of East Africa, the tree is found up to North Australia through all the countries in-between.
In India, it is found wild in some numbers in the forests of the West Coast. You have a full-grown wild almond tree in Chennai on the campus of St George's Convent (orphanage) on Poonamalle High Road (now called EVR Salai) opposite Pachaiyappa's college. I remember instructing my specimen-collecting attendant - Vedachalam - in the Botany Department at Pachaiyappa's College, to collect a few flowering twigs of the tree to be shown to my students: of course, after duly obtaining the permission of the principal of that institution.
The leaves are palmately compound, with around five to seven leaflets, each about six inches long, borne at the end of a long stalk: the leaflets, however, are
stalkless.
The flowers are strikingly crimson-brown in colour and are formed in drooping sprays of panicles, about one-foot-long, formed at the knotty ends of wrinkled branchlets that put forth new leaves.
Two points of uncommon botanical interest may be touched upon here. First, the colour of the flowers is that of the sepals and not of petals, as in most flowers. Indeed, the flowers are apetalous, which means the petals are totally absent. Second, the flowers are
unisexual, i.e. either staminate (male) or pistillate (female), though occasional bisexual flowers are also found.
By March, the flowers are no more seen and by April, large fruits about the size of a man's fist, appear. The fruits are usually held in pairs. They are woody and purse-shaped, held on to a hanging stalk. Eventually, the fruit breaks along one seam and opens just wide enough for the red seeds to fall out.
When asked for the tree's local Tamil name, I was told that in Chennai it is called 'kudira badam', which I thought was a very appropriate name, for each half of the
newly dehisced fruit bears a striking resemblance to the blinkers that are put around the horse's eyes so that the animal is not distracted as it runs while drawing the cart and the seed itself tastes very nearly like the 'naattu
badam'. I tasted it myself and can vouch for this.
The heartwood is said to be depurative (purifying blood) and serves as a febrifuge too (reduces fever).
