Tamarindus indica L.

• Title

  Tamarindus indica L.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Tamarindus indica L.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Tamarindus indica Tamarindo Tamarind Family Caesalpiniaceae Senna Family Tamarindus indica Linnaeus, Species Plantarum 34. 1753. The Tamarind tree, native of the East Indies and of tropical Africa, is a valuable introduction into the American tropics, where it has long been widely established, very useful for the hard and durable, yellow wood, which is available for furniture, tool-handles, and construction, for its pulpy fruit, which yields a pleasantly acid, laxative and cooling beverage, and the dense foliage offers desirable shade. The tree is common in both moist and dry parts of Porto Rico, as in nearly all other West Indian islands, locally spontaneous from seed. The pulp of the fruit is also used for preserves, with sugar. The genus Tamarindus (Latin name of the tree) is monotypic, consisting of one species only. Tamarindus indica (Indian) is a large tree, sometimes 20 meters high, or higher, with a trunk which may reach 1.5 meters in diameter, the brown bark rough, the branches widely spreading; the twigs are slender, and finely hairy. The once-compound, alternate, short-stalked leaves are from 6 to 12 centimeters long, with from 10 to 18 pairs of thin, smooth, blunt, or notched, netted-veined leaflets, from 10 to 25 millimeters long. The yellow, slender-stalked, rather small flowers are borne in loose clusters mostly shorter than the leaves; the calyx is from 8 to 10 millimeters long, with a top-shaped tube and 4 segments; there are 5 petals, the 3 upper ones a little longer than the calyx-segments, the 2 lower ones minute; there are 3 perfect stamens, united by their filaments, a little longer than the petals, and 2, minute, rudimentary ones (staminodes); the stalk of the ovary is attached to the calyx-tube; the long style is topped by the small stigma. The nearly round pod, which falls away without opening, is from 5 to 15 centimeters long, about 2 centimeters thick, its outer coating brown, crustaceous, the acid pulp enclosing the leathery inner portion, which is septate between the large, brown, shining seeds.