A medium-sized tree, up to 20 m tall, with wide-spreading or pendulous branches. Bark is grey-brown, fairly smooth with fine vertical lines. Leaves are simple, variable in shape, young leaves large, up to 30 cm long, palmate, with 3-7 acuminate lobes, shining; whitish above when young, becoming green with age, with rusty stellate pubescence beneath when young that persists on veins and petiole; leaves on mature trees ovate, entire, acuminate, long-petioled. Flowers in rusty-pubescent panicled cymes, 10-15 cm long; petals 5, dingy white or creamy, oblong, up to 1.3 cm long; ovary 2-celled. Fruits are indehiscent drupes, almost spherical, 5 cm or more in diameter, with thick, rough, hard shell making up 64-68% of fruit; difficult to separate from kernels; containing 1-2 hard-shelled black seeds.

Laxative (raw seed); purgative (bark oil); laxative, stimulant and sudorific (kernel).

AgroForestryTree Database
PROSEA (Plant Resources of South-East Asia) Foundation

Ascorbic acid, beta-carotene, linoleic acid, oleic acid, thiamin (seed); tannin (bark)

Used in poultices to treat headache, fevers, ulcers, swollen joints and constipation (pulped kernels); to treat bloody diarrhoea or dysentery and to treat tumours (bark); to treat sprue (bark sap mixed with coconut milk); to treat scrophulosis (decoction of young leaves); applied externally to treat headache and gonorrhoea (boiled leaves).