Pterygota Alata

Pterygota Alata

Family: Malvaceae

Characteristic features:

Habit : Deciduous trees

Stem : up to 35 m high, bole straight, buttressed; bark, greyish with light and dark patches, smooth; blaze creamy yellow; young parts covered with dense golden brown stellate-pubescence.

Leaves : simple, alternate clustered towards the end of branches; stipule free, lateral, cauducous; petiole 3.5-10 cm long, slender, glabrous; lamina 10-30 x 7.5-20 cm, ovate or orbicular, base cordate, subcordate or truncate, apex caudate-acuminate or acuminate, margin entire, glabrous, coriaceous, 5-7 nerved from base, palmate, lateral nerves 3-6 pairs, pinnate, prominent, intercostae reticulate, slender, prominent.

Flowers : unisexual or polygamous, to 2 cm long, brownish, in rusty brown tomentose panicles from leafless nodes; calyx 5-partite, lobes 1 cm long, curved out, tomentose outside; male flowers: staminal column cylindric bearing 4-5 phalanges of about 5 anthers each; female flowers: staminodes round the base of the ovary; carpels 5, free, superior, ovules many in each; style short, recurved; stigma 2-lobed.

Fruit : 3-5 follicles, 10-12.5 cm long, obovoid oblique.

seeds : 25-30, 5-7.5 cm long, oblong, brown winged.