The Bark is smooth, a dull grey or brown, with small scales. The slash is yellow, rapidly darkening on exposure.
The Leaves are obovate, 3-4 inches long, 1½-2 inches broad, with cleft tip and finely serrate edges. The venation is prominent on the upper surface. The young leaves are shiny and tinted red, and the mature leaf is tougher and grey-green with a waxy bloom.
The Flowers are borne on a short woody shoot, 4 or 5 together with 1-2 inch, slender stalks. Each has a calyx of 5 pale green overlapping sepals, 5 yellow petals smaller than the sepals and a ring of numerous stamens round an erect pistil. The flowers appear in February or March and the petals sometimes only remain 24 hours on the flower.
The Fruits are drupes, or small plums, in a ring round the much swollen torus or disc. The sepals enlarge and turn crimson, as does the disc, and the seeds, at first green, turn black and shiny, shrivelling when the surrounding pulp dries up. The branches are often borne down by the weight of the large crop of fruit which is a most conspicuous feature. The elongated pistil and the remains of the stamens appear like bristles on the torus. Most of the seeds are destroyed by a grub.
ODINA ACIDA Walp.—Farun mutane. ANACARDIACEAE.
A large tree, similar in flowers, fruits and leaves to O. Barteri, but differing in the absence of hairs on leaves and flower spikes to the extent of those on O. Barteri, and distinguished from it at once by the very smooth bark. It reaches large sizes, but not great heights, the average proportion being some 30 feet high with a girth of 6-8 feet. A very short, stout bole divides into a number of large, widely spreading limbs, the twigs drooping down to near the ground. The crown is open and rounded and of great width, affording little shade. Its habitat is the granite country, where it grows in large quantities on the plains or up in the rocky hills, stunted specimens flourishing on almost bare rock with the roots in the smallest cracks. The branches are very flexible and can be bent almost double without snapping. It is called “Farun mutane” as against the “Farun doya” of O. Barteri, because it is used for food and medicine.
The Bark is silvery grey, smooth to the point of shining, with occasional scales and a few lenticels. Very old trees cast large scales from the lower trunk. The bark frequently shows a marked spiral twisting round the stem and there are folds and creases like a skin. Resin exudes from the slash which is light red and of crumbling texture.
The Wood is practically the same as that of O. Barteri, q.v., for the most part consisting of a soft, dirty white wood, readily sawn and planed and of little value, the small heartwood being red-brown. The weight is about 25 lbs. a cubic foot.