• Family : STERCULIACEAE
  (Sterculia Or Cocoa Family)
• Family (Hindi name) : COCOA FAMILY
• Family (as per The APG System III) : MALVACEAE
• Basionym : Sterculia alata Roxb.
• Synonym(s) : Sterculia heynei Bedd.
• Species Name (as per The Plant List) : Pterygota alata (Roxb.) R.Br.
• Common name : Buddha's Coconut tree
• Vernacular name : Kodaittondi, Anaittondi (Tamil); Anathondi, Kavalam, Kudatthanni, Pothondi (Malayalam)
• Habit : Tree
• Habitat : Evergreen and semi-Evergreen forests
• Comments / notes : These trees are towering giants of the rain forests of North-East India.
• Key identification features : A large deciduous native tree with a heigh, narrow, crown and horizontal branches. Leaves are simple and large. Inflorescence is branched, covered with rusty-brown hairs and is few-flowered. Flowers (about 2.5 cm. wide) are brownish-yellow: males apetalous with sterile ovaries, while bisexual flowers are functionally female. Fruit is woody, dehiscent, about 12 cm. across and minutely reddish-brown-felted outside. Seeds are many and winged. Bark grey and relatively smooth.
• Flower, Fruit : April-May
• Collection Nos : Talbot 3633, KFP 582, KFP 12915
• Distribution :
  • Karnataka : Bengaluru district, Dakshina Kannada district, Hassan district, Kodagu (Coorg) district, Mysuru district, Uttara Kannada district
  • Kerala : Kannur district, Wayanad district, Kozhikode district, Malappuram district, Palakkad district, Thrissur district, Idukki district, Pathanamthitta district, Kollam district
  • Tamil Nadu : Kanchipuram (Changalpattu-CGP) district, The Nilgiri district, Tirunelveli district
• Native : India
• World Distribution : South Asia and Myanmar
• Conservation Status : Not Evaluated (NE)
• Literature : Flora of Karnataka, Saldanha, 1984; Rao & Razi, 1981 - Mysore; Keshava Murthy & Yoganarasimhan, 1990 - Flora of Coorg district, Karnataka state; Sasidharan, N. 2011. Flowering plants of Kerala. DVD, V 2, KFRI; Henry, Kumari & Chithra (1983). Flora of Tamil Nadu, India vol. 1.
• Citation : Sankara Rao, K., Raja K Swamy, Deepak Kumar, Arun Singh R. and K. Gopalakrishna Bhat (2019). Flora of Peninsular India. http://peninsula.ces.iisc.ac.in/plants.php?name=Pterygota alata. Downloaded on 2 April 2025.

Botanical Description

Herbarium Specimen(s)

Field Image(s)