Bitterroot Restoration

Order: Ericales
Family: Lecythidaceae

Common name: Hijal, Samandar(Beng.); Indian oak(Eng.)
Edible Parts: Timber, seed
Native Range: Native to coastal wetlands in southern Asia and northern Australasia, from Afghanistan east to the Philippines and Queensland.

Barringtonia acutangula is an evergreen tree of moderate size. A medium sized glabrous tree 10-15 m in height with pale grey slender young branches and rough dark brown bark; leaves simple, alternate, obovate-oblong or elliptic-cuneate. Flowers fragrant, dark scarlet, in pendulous many flowered racemes.

Medicinal Uses: Barringtonia acutangula tree has long been used for medicine, timber and as a fish poison. In traditional medicine, when children suffer from a cold in the chest, the seed is rubbed down on a stone with water and applied over the sternum, and if there is much dyspnoea a few grains with or without the juice of fresh ginger are administered internally and seldom fail to induce vomiting and the expulsion of mucus from the air passages.