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Barringtonia racemosa

Authority Family Magnoliopsida:Dilleniidae:Lecythidales:Lecythidaceae Synonyms Barringtonia insignis Miq., Barringtonia pallida (Miers) Koord. & Valeton, Barringtonia salomonensis Rech. Common names apalang, brack-water mangrove, butan darat, chik ban, chik suan, common putat, freshwater mangrove, hippo apple, kye-bin, kyi, mangrove, penggung, poeierkwasboom, powder-puff tree, putat ayam, putat ayer, putat aying, putat kampong, putat sungai, som pawng, wild guava Editor Ecocrop code 501

Notes
DESCRIPTION: It is usually a small tree, 4-8 m in height but occasionally reaching 15 m. Bark grey, yellow or brown, mottled, rather smooth to fissured. Leaves alternate, simple, crowded at the ends of the branches, large, obovate-oblong to oblanceolate, 8-35 x 4-13 cm. USE: Young leaves are eaten as a vegetable; seeds are pounded to extract the starchy content, which is made into cakes. The tree provides firewood, fibre and tannin and can be grown as an ornamental. The fruit, bark, wood and root can be used as fish poison, insecticide and are also poisonous to people. Root, bark and juice are used medicinally. The fruit is used to treat cough, asthma and diarrhoea. Seeds are used to treat eye inflammation and by midwives for parturition. In Malaysia, the leaves traditionally are used to treat high blood pressure and as a depurative. Pounded leaves are said to treat chicken pox. GROWING PERIOD: Perennial. COMMON NAMES: freshwater mangrove. FURTHER INF: It is considered a mangrove associate but can also be found in tropical rainforest areas, open lowlands and thickets. Occurring always near water: along riverbanks and in freshwater swamps, and occasionally in the less saline areas of mangrove swamps. The species cannot tolerate even light frost. It favours the wet tropical, moist topical and wet subtropical climatic zones.
Sources
SOURCE: ICRAF Agroforestree Database