HIND. Punnaga chettu, . . TEL.
This beautiful tree, with an appropriate name, grows in the western part of Ceylon, where it is employed for masts and cross sticks of Yettra dhonies and fishing boats, and poles of bullock carts. A cubic foot weighs 40 pounds. In the alpine forests it attains a great size, and it fur nishes part of the poon spars so valuable for shipping. • This grows to a considerable size on the Malabar coast, but is a still larger tree on the island of Balambangan and along the shores of Banguey and Sampainnangio, where it has got the names of Palo-Maria and Dancawn. It is also common in the Philippine Islands, where, as in Malabar, the natives prepare oil from its fruit. Near the Burman monasteries this fragrant flowered calophyllum is occasionally seen. It is in flower and fruit most part of the year ; it grows well in sandy tracts close to the sea, where few others thrive; it is rare at a distance from the coast. It yields fruit twice a year,
in March and September, and frequently attains the age of 300 years. It is cultivated in Java for the sake of its shade and the fragrance of its flowers, and there the wood is much used in house, and to some extent in ship, building. Mr. Dalrymple tells us that no tree is superior to this for knees and crooked timber. A resin is obtained from the roots and trunk, said by some authorities to be identical with the tacamahaca of the isle of Bourbon. The flowers have the odour of migno nette. The seeds yield about 60 per cent. of their weight of oil. In the Samoan islands, the large ava bowl is made from the tamanu, C. inophyllum, and occupies a conspicuous place.— Roxb.; Capt. Elphinstone Erskine,• Islands of the Western Pacific, p. 46 ; Drs. Wight, Gibson, Mason, Ainslie, O'Shaughnessy ; Eng. Cyc.; Voigt ; Thwaites, i. 51; Bennet, i. 112; Seeman. See Oils.