Description

Champak is very well known flower native to India, and popular for its fragrant flowers. It is a tree up to 50 m or taller, up to 1.9 m d.b.h. Flowers are fragrant, tepals 15-20, yellow, inverted-lanceshaped, 2-4 x 0.4-0.5 cm. Staminal connective is protruding and forming a long tip. Buds, young twigs, young petioles, and young leaf blades are pale yellow velvet-hairy. Twigs are ascending and forming a narrow umbelliform crown. Stipular scar 0.3-1 x as long as petiole. Leaf-stalks are 2-4 cm, leaves elliptic or ovate, 10-20 x 4.5-10 cm, slightly puberulous below, base broadly wedge-shaped or rounded, tip long-pointed tp falling off. Fruit is 7-15 cm; mature carpels obovoid-ellipsoid, 1-1.5 cm, tuberculate. Seeds 2-4 per carpel, rugose. Champa is found in the Himalayas, up to NE India, South India and SE Asia, at altitudes of 600-1300 m. Flowering: June-July.

Characteristics:

Branches: Branchlets terete with annular scars of caducous stipules, glabrous; apical bud covered by sericeous lanceolate stipules. Leaves: Leaves simple, alternate, spiral; petiole 1-3 cm long, stout and planoconvex in cross section; lamina 9.5-25 x 3.5-9 cm, elliptic-lanceolate, apex acuminate with twisted acumen, base acute to attenuate, margin slightly undulate, glabrous, chartaceous; midrib nearly flat above; secondary nerves 12-16 pairs; tertiary nerves closely and strongly reticulate. Flowers: Flowers solitary, axillary, large, yellow, fragrant. Seed: Follicles, warty, 2-3 cm long, arranged as spike, dehiscing dorsally; seeds 1, scarlet.

Medicinal use:

Champak has traditionally been used to treat diarrhea, cough, bronchitis, hypertension, dyspepsia, fever, rheumatism, abscesses, dysmenorrhea and inflammation.