Changes

The wood is rather difficult to work with hand tools, but it is quite easy to machine. It can be planed to a smooth surface. Turning, screwing, polishing and gluing give good results, and the wood can be peeled or sliced to make decorative veneer and plywood. The heartwood is durable, being resistant to dry-wood termites and wood-rotting fungi; it is difficult to treat with preservatives. The sapwood is perishable but readily treatable. The wood can cause allergic contact dermatitis in people working with it.

Deciduous or evergreen medium-sized to large tree up to 40 m tall; bole straight or slightly twisted, branchless for up to 12(–24) m, up to 80(–150) cm in diameter, often with prominent buttresses; bark surface whitish to grey, thin, becoming flaking; crown rounded to dome-shaped. Leaves arranged spirally, imparipinnately compound with (3–)5–7(–9) leaflets; stipules small, caducous; petiole and rachis glabrous; petiolules up to 1 cm long; leaflets alternate, broadly obovate to elliptical-oblong, 4–12 cm × 2.5–9 cm, obtuse, rounded or notched at apex, papery or thinly leathery, glabrous. Inflorescence a terminal or axillary panicle 5–15 cm long, laxly branched, almost glabrous, many-flowered. Flowers bisexual, papilionaceous, 6–8 mm long, distinctly pedicellate; calyx campanulate, c. 4 mm long, lobes shorter than tube, lower lobe longest, upper lobes fused; corolla whitish, with obovate standard and clawed wings and keel; stamens usually 9, fused into a tube, but free in upper part; ovary superior, with distinct stipe at base, style short. Fruit a flat, elliptical to oblong, papery pod 4–10 cm × 1.5–2.5 cm, with stipe up to 1 cm long, glabrous, reticulately veined, indehiscent, 1–3(–4)-seeded. Seeds kidney-shaped, 7–10 mm long.