Magnolia champaca

Magnolia champaca (L.) Baill. ex Pierre

Family       : Magnoliaceae

Common Name : ചെമ്പകം (Mal)

: चम्पा (Hin)

: Champak(Eng)

Champa is very well known flower native to India, and popular for its fragrant flowers. It is a tree up to 50 m or taller, up to 1.9 m d.b.h. Flowers are fragrant, tepals 15-20, yellow, inverted-lanceshaped, 2-4 x 0.4-0.5 cm. Staminal connective is protruding and forming a long tip. Buds, young twigs, young petioles, and young leaf blades are pale yellow velvet-hairy. Twigs are ascending and forming a narrow umbelliform crown. Stipular scar 0.3-1 x as long as petiole. Leaf-stalks are 2-4 cm, leaves elliptic or ovate, 10-20 x 4.5-10 cm, slightly puberulous below, base broadly wedge-shaped or rounded, tip long-pointed tp falling off. Fruit is 7-15 cm; mature carpels obovoid-ellipsoid, 1-1.5 cm, tuberculate. Seeds 2-4 per carpel, rugose. Champa is found in the Himalayas, up to NE India, South India and SE Asia, at altitudes of 600-1300 m

Evergreen trees, to 25 m high; bark grey; branchlets lenticellate, scarious. Leaves simple, alternate, 8-25 x 4-10 cm, ovate, ovate-lanceolate, elliptic-lanceolate or elliptic-oblong, base acute, apex acuminate, margin entire, wavy, puberulent beneath; lateral nerves 8-18 pairs, pinnate, prominent; petiole 1-3 cm long, pubescent; stipules 1-2.5 cm long, lateral, adnate to the petiole, ovate, enclosing leaf buds, deciduous, leaving annular scar. Flowers bisexual, yellow or white, fragrant, 4-5 cm across, axillary or terminal, solitary; bracts greenish-yellow, spathaceous, pubescent, deciduous enclosing the bud; pedicels ca. 1.5 cm long, stout. Tepals 12-15, 4.5-8 cm long, oblanceolate, or oblong-lanceolate, gradually acute towards the centre, fleshy. Stamens numerous, subclavate; filaments short, flat; connective appendage up to 1 mm long; anthers 8-6 mm long. Carpels many, ovoid-oblong, densely hairy. Fruit an aggregate of capsules 1.5 x 1 cm, laxly arranged, ovoid to ellipsoid with white sparkle; seeds 3-4, enclosed by fleshy red aril.

Use: It is a Medicinal and a Garden plant

Distribution : Indo-Malesia and China

Flowering & Fruiting : March-July