INDIAN PULAI / DEVIL TREE / BLACKBOARD TREE (Alstonia Scholaris)
This tree can grow up to 35 m tall with a pagoda like crown of tiered branches. The stalked leaves are in whorls of 3-8 leaves, which grow up to 20 cm long. The leaf blade is oblanceolate and leathery. Its strongly fragrant flowers are pale greenish-yellow and they are arranged in tight clusters growing from the leaf axils. Each flower usually produces 2 elongated pod like follicles, which split when ripe to release hairy winged seeds which are wind dispersed. It can be found in India, Sri Lanka, SE Asia, Tropical Australia and the Solomon Islands.
Hindus belief that this is the tree of the devil. In the 19th century SE Asia, wood from the tree was used to make wooden slates for school children to write on, hence the scientific epithet 'scholaris' in its scientific name. Students wrote with a pen made of Arenga (palm) wood on the pipe-clay coated wood of the blackboard tree. The wood is even used to make coffins. The plant has many medicinal uses, owing largely to the numerous alkaloids in the poisonous latex. It can be used as a cermifuge, an alleged anti-malarial, an antipyretic and to treat skin disorders and urticarial (hives).
This species is very similar to the Pulai (Alstonia Angustiloba) except that the Pulai has white rather than greenish yellow flowers, smooth rather than minutely pimply seeds and a rather odorless flower.
Do you know ... the Latin name of Alstonia came from Dr Charles Aston, a Scottish botanist and professor of Botany, Edinburg University.
Hindus belief that this is the tree of the devil. In the 19th century SE Asia, wood from the tree was used to make wooden slates for school children to write on, hence the scientific epithet 'scholaris' in its scientific name. Students wrote with a pen made of Arenga (palm) wood on the pipe-clay coated wood of the blackboard tree. The wood is even used to make coffins. The plant has many medicinal uses, owing largely to the numerous alkaloids in the poisonous latex. It can be used as a cermifuge, an alleged anti-malarial, an antipyretic and to treat skin disorders and urticarial (hives).
This species is very similar to the Pulai (Alstonia Angustiloba) except that the Pulai has white rather than greenish yellow flowers, smooth rather than minutely pimply seeds and a rather odorless flower.
Do you know ... the Latin name of Alstonia came from Dr Charles Aston, a Scottish botanist and professor of Botany, Edinburg University.