Sterculia foetida

Sterculia foetida

The biggest plant dictionary | Sterculia foetida | Java olive is a soft wooded tree that grows up to 115 feet high. In tea growing regions the soft wood is used to make tea chests.

The tree has smooth, grayish-white bark and a fibrous inner bark. The large, palmately compound leaves are crowded at the ends of the branches and have 5-9 leaflets. The foul smelling flowers are bell-shaped, 5-lobed, yellowish green when they open and later turn deep red. The woody, bright-red fruit consist of 1-5 spreading follicles that are armed with stiff stinging bristles along the inner margins. Each follicle splits to reveal up to 17 blue-black seeds attached to the inner margins.

Trees. Branches verticillate and spreading. Leaves apically clustered, palmately 7-9-foliolate; stipules arrow-shaped, caducous; petiole 10-20 cm; leaflet blades elliptic-lanceolate, 10-15 × 3-5 cm, at first pilose, glabrescent when mature, base cuneate, margin entire, apex long acuminate or caudate. Inflorescence apical on branchlets, paniculate, erect, many-flowered. Pedicels shorter than flowers. Epicalyx lobes minute. Calyx purple-red, ca. 12 mm, divided nearly to base, lobes elliptic-lanceolate, abaxially yellowish brown pubescent, adaxially upper half white villous. Male flowers: stamens 12-15, capitate. Female flowers: carpels 5, hairy. Style curved; stigma 5-divided. Follicle ellipsoid and boat-shaped, 5-8 cm, woody, nearly glabrous, apex acute into beak, 10-15-seeded. Seeds black, ellipsoid, ca. 1.5 cm, smooth.