Economic importance of Alstonia scholaris

Common name:  Satwin, chattin
Family: Apocynaceae
Origin: India

Description: It is a medium sized to a large evergreen tree with tall, straight often buttressed and fluted stem.  Whorled branches and dark – grey shining leaves also in whorls. Bark is blackish grey, rough with shallow cracks. Leaves 4-10 in a whorl, obovate & obtuse, gradually narrowed into the petiole, dark green above, pale beneath. Flowers greenish white, in panicles of cymes on stout peduncles.  Follicular fruit.

Economic Importance:

• The wood is used for manufacturing packing cases and boxes for packing tea, writing boards and lamina boards. Wood charcoal is used for gun powder.
• Can be peeled easily and accepted as suitable for 3rd class commercial plywood after necessary treatment.
• It is good enough for making both match boxes and splints, also fairly suitable for second grade pencil and paper industry.
• Bark which is bitter in taste is used as an astringent, tonic and useful for diarrhoea and dysentery. The milky juice of bark is applied to sores and ulcers. Bark also yields a fibre.
• Flowers yield an alkaloid ‘Picrinine‘ which acts as a depressant on the central nervous system.

 

Image Credit:  J.M.Garg, on Wikipedia