Cordia dichotoma - Indian Cherry

Indian cherry is a small to medium-size deciduous tree with a short crooked trunk, short bole and spreading crown. Leaves are simple, entire and slightly toothed, elliptical-lanceshaped to broad ovate with a round and heart-shaped base. The stem bark is grayish brown smooth or longitudinally wrinkled. Flowers are short stalked, bisexual and white to pinkish in colour and appear in loose corymbose cymes. Flowers are dimorphic, stalkless. Calyx is bell-shaped, 5-6 mm, 5-lobed; sepals unequal, triangular. Flowers are about as long as calyx; petals shorter than tube, margin somewhat wavy. Filaments of male flowers are about 3.5 mm, filaments of bisexual flowers 1-2 mm. Fruits are edible with sticky flesh mass. It is a yellow or pinkish-yellow shining spherical or ovoid drupe seated in a saucer-like enlarged calyx. It turns black on ripening and the pulp gets sticky. Indian cherry grows in the sub-Himalayan tract and outer ranges, ascending up to about 1500 m altitude. It is found in diverse of forests ranging from the dry deciduous forests of Rajasthan to the moist deciduous forests of Western Ghats and tidal forests in Myanmar. In Maharashtra, it grows in moist monsoon forest.