Madhuca Indica
Family : Sapotaceae
Synonymous : M. longifolia
Common Name : Indian Butter Tree
English Name : Mahua
Hindi Name : Mahua
Telugu Name : Ippa
Bengali Name : Maul
Tree Characteristics :
Mohwa is one of the most important of Indian forest trees, not because it may possess valuable timber - and it is hardly ever cut for this purpose - but because of its delicious and nutritive flowers. It is a tree of abundant growth and, to the people of Central India, it provides their most important article of food as the flowers can be stored almost indefinitely. It is large and deciduous with a thick, grey bark, vertically cracked and wrinkled. Most of the leaves fall from February to April, and during that time the musky-scented flowers appear. They hang in close bunches of a dozen or so from the end of the gnarled, grey branchlets.
Nursery Practice :
Ripe fruits are collected by shaking the branches and the seeds are separated from the fruits by pressing and they are then dried. The seed, being oily, loses its viability quickly on storge. Good seed years occur in every alternate year. The seed collection is short and much of the seed crop is lost in rains. Seeds is sown soon after collection in the nursery beds and covered with a layer of soil of 2 cms thickness. One month old seedlings are pricked out of the polythene bags. The growth of the seedlings is slow. No of seeds per kg is 750; Germination Percenate is 13 to 57 and the Germination Period is about 10 days.
Economic Uses :
Ø The fat (solid at ambient temperature) is used for the care of the skin, to manufacture soap or detergents, and as a vegetable butter. It can also be used as a fuel oils. The seed cakes obtained after extraction of oil constitute very good fertilizer. The flowers are used to produce an alcoholic drink in tropical India.
Ø The leaves of Madhuca indica (= M. longifolia) are fed on by the moth Antheraea paphia, which produces tassar silk. Jam and Jelly is being produced from the flowers.
Ø Fermented to produce the alcoholic drink mahuwa, a country liquor.
Medicinally the tree is very valuable. The bark is used to cure leprosy and to heal wounds, tne flowers are prepared to relieve coughs, biliousness and heart-trouble while the fruit is given in cases of consumption and blood diseases.
