Cocculus laurifolius DC - MENISPERMACEAE

Vernacular names : Malayalam: Marpinki,

English   Kannada   Tamil   

Botanical descriptions Ecology Distribution Literatures

Botanical descriptions :

Habit : Large shrubs or small trees, to 6 m tall.
Trunk & Bark : Bark shallowly reticulately fissured; blaze white.
Branches and branchlets : Young branchlets subterete, sparingly hairy, glabrous when mature.
Leaves : Leaves simple, alternate, spiral; petiole 0.7 cm long, canaliculate, glabrous; lamina 3.3-10.3 x 1.7-3.5 cm, elliptic-oblanceolate, apex acuminate with blunt tip, base acute-cuneate, margin entire, chartaceous, shining above, glabrous; midrib raised above; triplinerved; tertiary_nerves broadly reticulate.
Inflorescence / Flower : Inflorescence axillary panicles; flowers unisexual; male flowers yellow; female flowers greenish yellow.
Fruit and Seed : Drupes, compressed, ca. 0.6 cm across, glabrous, depressed at either ends; seed 1.

Ecology :

Understorey trees in dry evergreen forests between 1200 and 1600 m.

Distribution :

Indomalaysia and East Asia; in the Western_Ghats- South and Central Sahyadris.

Literatures :

Syst. Nat. 1: 530. 1817; Gamble, Fl. Madras 1: 29.1997 (re.ed); Sasidharan, Biodiversity documentation for Kerala- Flowering Plants, part 6: 22. 2004; Saldanha, Fl. Karnataka 1: 97. 1984.

Top of the Page