Dillenia indica
| Dillenia indica | |
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| Dillenia indica leaves, fruits & buds in Kolkata, West Bengal, India | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| (unranked): | Angiosperms |
| (unranked): | Eudicots |
| (unranked): | Core eudicots |
| Order: | unplaced |
| Family: | Dilleniaceae |
| Genus: | Dillenia |
| Species: | D. indica |
| Binomial name | |
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Dillenia indica L. |
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Dillenia indica (commonly known as elephant apple or chulta) is a species of Dillenia native to southeastern Asia, from India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka east to southwestern China (Yunnan) and Vietnam, and south through Thailand to Malaysia and Indonesia.
It is an evergreen large shrub or small to medium-sized tree growing to 15 m tall. The leaves are 15–36 cm long, with a conspicuously corrugated surface with impressed veins. Its branches are used to make good firewood. The flowers are large, 15–20 cm diameter, with five white petals and numerous yellow stamens. Its characteristic round fruits are large, greenish yellow, have many seeds and are edible. The fruit is a 5–12 cm diameter aggregate of 15 carpels, each carpel containing five seeds embedded in an edible but fibrous pulp.
Dillenia indica produces a large hard fruit which is accessible only to the megaherbivores. An interesting study in the Buxa Tiger Reserve by ecologists Sekar & Sukumar has shown that Asian elephants appear to have a particular fondness for the fruits of D. indica, and hence an important seed dispenser for this tree.With the prospects of extinction of the elephants this tree has developed a back-up system, whereby its hard fruits that were only accessible to megaherbivores, slowly soften on the forest floor through the dry season to allow access to successively smaller animals such as macacques, rodents and squirrels. Seeds from both old and soft fruits are able to germinate well, enabling the persistence of this tree to be independent of the survival of its major megaherbivore disperser.
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Wikipedia