Aglaia elliptica (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Aglaia elliptica Blume

Protologue: Bijdr. fl. Ned. Ind.: 171 (1825).

Family: Meliaceae

• Aglaia oxypetala Valeton (1901),
• Aglaia harmsiana Perkins. (1903),
• Aglaia havilandii Ridley (1930),
• Aglaia longipetiolata Elmer (1937).

• Indonesia: tanglar (Javanese), bajing talang (Sumatra), langsat-langsat (Kalimantan), pisek (Sulawesi)
• Malaysia: peler tupai (Peninsular), segera, bunyau (Iban, Sarawak)
• Philippines: malatumbaga (general), mata-mata (Bikol), malasaging (Filipino), hagasan (Bisaya), mamonak (Sulu).

Southern Burma (Myanmar), peninsular Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, Java, Bali, Flores, Borneo, Sulawesi and the Philippines.

Fruits are edible, taste resembles that of the cranberry. The wood is hard and durable, used as timber ( e.g. for furniture, general construction and agricultural implements) in the Philippines, but the supply is scarce.

Bathing in water boiled with the bark is used against tumours, whereas the leaves are applied to wounds.

• A small to medium-sized, sometimes fairly large tree up to 20(-40) m tall, bole branchless for up to 15 m, up to 60 cm in diameter, with steep buttresses up to 1.5 m high, bark surface dark reddish-brown or greenish-brown, inner bark magenta.
• Leaflets (5-)7-11(-15), subopposite to alternate, with 6-19 pairs of secondary veins, sometimes pitted, with numerous reddish-brown to pale orange-brown stellate hairs or scales, especially on the veins below.
• Flowers 5-merous, anthers 5, style-head ovoid or depressed globose, with 2 small apical lobes or a central depression.
• Fruit a subglobose indehiscent berry, 2-locular, 2-2.5 cm in diameter, densely hairy.
• Seed 1, surrounded by the edible aril.

A. elliptica is locally common in the Philippines in primary and secondary evergreen forest, swamp forest, along rivers or roads and in periodically inundated locations, on various soils, from sea-level up to 2000 m altitude. It is rare in Java. The density of the wood is 755-860 kg/m³ at 15% moisture content.

• Backer, C.A. & Bakhuizen van den Brink, R.C., 1963 1968. Flora of Java. 3 Volumes. Noordhoff, Groningen, the Netherlands.
• Brown, W.H., 1951 1957. Useful plants of the Philippines. Reprint of the 1941 1943 ed. 3 Volumes. Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Technical Bulletin 10. Bureau of Printing, Manila, the Philippines.
• Koorders, S.H. & Valeton, Th., 1894 1914. Bijdrage tot de kennis der boomsoorten van Java [Contribution to the knowledge of tree species of Java]. 13 Volumes. G. Kolff & Co., Batavia.
• Merrill, E.D., 1923 1925. An enumeration of Philippine flowering plants. 4 Volumes. Government of the Philippine Islands, Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Bureau of Printing, Manila.

68, 414, 481, 527, 544, 626, 705. timbers

185, 247, 536, 541, 686. medicinals

• P.C.M. Jansen, J. Jukema, L.P.A. Oyen, T.G. van Lingen

• Sri Hayati Widodo