Glochidion lanceolarium - Indian Cheese Tree

Indian Cheese Tree is a bushy shrub or tree, 1.5-2 m high, almost entirely hairless. Leaves are oblong to elliptic or lanceshaped or elliptic-obovate to inverted-lanceshaped, unequal at base, somewhat pointed, apiculate to tapering or with a tail at tip, 5-15 x 2.5-6 cm, leathery, glossy, smooth; lateral nerves 4-10 pairs; leaf-stalks 2-10 mm long. Flowers are borne in sometimes slightly supra-in leaf-axils and stalked (flower-cluster-stalks up to 5 mm long), rarely narrowly thyrsiform and up to 4 cm long, the males 12-20- flowered, the females fewer-flowered. Male flowers have flower-stalks 7-20 mm long; sepals elliptic, oblong to lanceshaped, 2.5-5 x 1-2.5 mm; anthers 3-4, 1.5-2 mm long. Female flowers are stalkless; sepals oblong, ovate, elliptic or triangular, 1.5-3 x 0.8-2 mm.. Fruits are depressed-spherical, 5-10 x 15-30 mm, 5-8-locular, shallowly to deeply lobed with the lobes often bilobulate, smooth, stalks absent or 1-5 mm long. Indian Cheese Tree is found in deciduous, secondary or moist broad-leaved forests, often in swampy places, up to 1800 m elevations, in Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam, Meghalaya, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka. It is also found in S. China and Indo-China. Flowering: September-June.