Author:
Jan Scholten
Book:
Qjurious
Type:
Info
Chapter:
3-644.53.__
Butea monosperma
English: Flame-of-the-forest; Bastard teak; Free fire; Flame tree petals; Shining nails of love; Tear at young hearts; Parrot Tree.
Telugu: Modugu chettu.
Kerala: Plasu; Chamata; Vishalnarayan.
Hidi: Chichra tesu; Desuka jhad; Dhaak, palaash; Chalcha; Kankrei.
Marathi: PaLash.
Gujarati: Kesudo.
Urdu: Palashpapra.
Kannada: Muthuga.
Bengali: Kinshuk; Polash.
Burmese: Pauk.
Javanese: Ploso.
Malay: Semarkat Api.
Region: tropical and sub-tropical parts of the Indian, Southeast Asia,western Indonesia.
Content: alkaloids, carbohydrates, tannins, flavanoids, phenolic compounds, starch.
Culture: poems and songs of Rabindranath Tagore; a form of Agni, the God of fire and war; flowers are specially used in the worship of Lord Shiva on occasion of Shivaratri; fire ritual; tree for achieved enlightenment, or Bodhi by Lord Buddha called Medhankara; the Punjabi poet Harinder Singh Mahboob has used it as a symbol in his poetry; Rudyard Kipling's short story Beyond the Pale says of the dhak: The flower of the dhak means diversely "desire", "come", "write", or "danger", according to the other things with it; the first sloka of the Sukla Yajurveda speaks about the Palasa tree, a tree branch is cut and trimmed by the Adhvaryu priest who performed the practical part of sacrifice, the day before a new moon or a full moon, and used it to drive the calves away from cows whose milk was to form a part of the offerings for the next day's special ceremony.
Botany: small-sized, dry-season, deciduous tree, fast growing to 15 m tall; leaves very leathery, pinnate, petiole ± 10 cm, 3 leaflets of ± 15 cm long; flowers ± 2 cm long, bright orange-red, in racemes up to 15 cm long; fruit is a pod 15 long and 4 cm
Use: for timber, resin, fodder, medicine, and dye; wood is dirty white and soft; for well-curbs and water scoops; spoons and ladles in various Hindu rituals to pour ghee, clarified butter, into the fire; good charcoal can be obtained from it; leaves to serve food instead; leather by leather workers because of its tannin; gum, called kamarkas in Hindi, is used in certain food dishes; flowers are used as a dye