A dense, round-topped tree with a smooth, grey, trunk and limbs, reaching up to 12 m high, but is usually much smaller. Leaves leathery, pinnate, divided into 4-8 pairs of elliptic or lanceolate, acuminate, glabrous leaflets, 5-7 cm long, reddish when young, becoming shiny and bright green. Inflorescence a many-branched panicle, 5-30 cm long, many flowered; flowers small, yellowish-white, functionally male or female; calyx tetramerous; corolla absent. Fruit covered by a rough leathery rind or pericarp, pink to strawberry red. Fruit oval, heart shaped or nearly round, 2.5 cm or more in diameter. Seeds may be small (known as "chicken tongue") which are up to 1 cm in length or large varying between 1 and 2 cm in length and plumper than the chicken tongues.

Astringent (seeds); anticancer (root)

Center for New Crops & Plant Products, at Purdue University
AgroForestryTree Database

Used to relieve coughing and to have a beneficial effect on gastralgia, tumors and enlargements of the glands (fruits); to overcome smallpox eruptions and diarrhea (tea of fruit peel); in neuralgia, orchitis, enterocele, swelling of the testes, and testalgia, dysmenorrhea and intestinal troubles (seeds); gargled for sore throat (decoctions of the root, bark and flowers).

Jing-Nuan Wu. An Illustrated Chinese Materia Medica. P: 390, Oxford University Press, Inc.2005.