''Choerospondias axillaris'', known in English as the Nepali hog plum, is a

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, e.g., including only woody plants with secondary growth, only ...

in the family

Anacardiaceae The Anacardiaceae, commonly known as the cashew family or sumac family, are a family of flowering plants, including about 83 genera with about 860 known species. Members of the Anacardiaceae bear fruits that are drupes and in some cases produce ...

. It is the sole species in genus ''Choerospondias''. It is native to the

Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya ( ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the Earth's highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest. More than list of h ...

Indochina Mainland Southeast Asia (historically known as Indochina and the Indochinese Peninsula) is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to th ...

, southern and north-central China, Taiwan, and Japan. It is a common fruit in

Nepal Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China Ch ...

and

Bhutan Bhutan, officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked country in South Asia, in the Eastern Himalayas between China to the north and northwest and India to the south and southeast. With a population of over 727,145 and a territory of , ...

, called lapsi and aamli in the Nepali-speaking community. Its fruit is about 3 centimeters long and has a soft whitish sour flesh and green to yellow skin. The fruit is made into

pickles Pickle, pickled or Pickles may refer to: Food * Pickle, a food that has undergone pickling * Pickled cucumber * Pickle, a sweet, vinegary pickled chutney popular in Britain, such as Branston Pickle, also known as "sweet pickle" or "ploughman's ...

, fruit tarts, and sour, spicy candy. The tree has long been cultivated for its fruit. The fruit is nutritious and has a price comparable to the

mandarin orange A mandarin orange (''Citrus reticulata''), often simply called mandarin, is a small, rounded citrus tree fruit. Treated as a distinct species of orange, it is usually eaten plain or in fruit salads. The mandarin is small and oblate, unlike the ...

on the Nepalese market. This is a

deciduous In the fields of horticulture and botany, the term deciduous () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed Leaf, leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, aft ...

tree growing up to 20 meters tall. The smaller branches are purple-brown in color. The compound leaves are up to long and divided into 3 to 6 papery oval leaflets each up to . The tree is

dioecious Dioecy ( ; ; adj. dioecious, ) is a characteristic of certain species that have distinct unisexual individuals, each producing either male or female gametes, either directly (in animals) or indirectly (in seed plants). Dioecious reproduction is ...

, with male and female trees producing different types of

inflorescence In botany, an inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a plant's Plant stem, stem that is composed of a main branch or a system of branches. An inflorescence is categorized on the basis of the arrangement of flowers on a mai ...

. Male flowers occur in long clusters and have curving, brown-veined petals about 3 millimeters long. Female flowers are solitary in leaf axils at the tips of branches. They are larger than the male flowers and yield the edible

drupe In botany, a drupe (or stone fruit) is a type of fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin, and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a single shell (the ''pip'' (UK), ''pit'' (US), ''stone'', or ''pyrena'') of hardened endocarp with a seed ...

. The fallen fruits are consumed and dispersed by sambar and

barking deer Muntjacs ( ), also known as the barking deer or rib-faced deer, (URL is Google Books) are small deer of the genus ''Muntiacus'' native to South Asia and Southeast Asia. Muntjacs are thought to have begun appearing 15–35 million years ago, ...

. The fruit is also used in religious ceremonies as an offering. Besides fruit, the tree yields valuable wood and hard seeds which are burned for fuel, and has parts used medicinally in

Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...

and

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...

Catechin-7-O-glucoside Catechin-7-''O''-glucoside is a flavan-3-ol glycoside formed from catechin. Natural occurrences Catechin-7-''O''-glucoside can be isolated from the hemolymph of the European pine sawfly ('' Neodiprion sertifer''). It also occurs in relatively ...

can be found in the stem barks of ''C. axillaris''.Flavanoidal constituents of ''Choerospondias axillaries'' and their in vitro antitumor and anti-hypoxia activities. Li Chang-wei, Cui Cheng-bin, Cai Bing, Han Bing, Li Ming-ming and Fan Ming, Chinese Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, 2009, 19 (1), pages 48-51,64
abstract
)

Gallery

File:Choerospondias axillaris.jpg, File:Choerospondias axillaris (Anacardiaceae) at Sim's Park, Coonoor.JPG, File:Choerospondias axillaris Anacardiaceae.jpg, File:Choerospondias axillaris seeds, by Omar Hoftun.jpg,

References

Anacardiaceae Trees of China Flora of the Indian subcontinent Flora of North-Central China Flora of South-Central China Flora of Southeast China Trees of Indo-China Trees of Japan Trees of Nepal Trees of Taiwan Decorative fruits and seeds Dioecious plants Anacardiaceae genera Monotypic Sapindales genera Plants described in 1832 {{Anacardiaceae-stub