Synonym: Santaloides afzelii.
Genus: ± 70 species.
Region: east Asia, southern China, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, northern Australia.
Habitat: dense mixed forests, bamboo woods, thickets, hills; primary and secondary forests, along forest edges, more open places, along river-banks, in swamps, thickets, coastal rocks; elevations below 800 metres.
Use: traditional medicine; tying material, ropes; poison for killing dogs.
BotanyVigorous climbing shrub, scandent, or woody liane; young branches glabrescent, lenticels inconspicuous; stems up to 25 metres long.
Leaves: rhachis up to 20 cm long; glabrescent; leaflets 2–5 pairs, 7–10 × 3·5–6 cm, ovate to ovate-elliptic, glabrous, apex long and narrowly acuminate or shorter and more bluntly acuminate, base rounded to broadly cuneate, ± symmetrical.
Inflorescence: axillary, fascicled; rhachis up to 6 cm. long, glabrescent; branchlets slender.
Flowers: fragrant; sepals 3–4 × 3–3·5 mm, broadly ovate, margin ciliate, otherwise glabrous; petals white or pinkish, to 8 × 3·5 mm, oblong-obovate; stamens 5, antisepalous, up to 5·5 mm long, 5 antipetalous, up to 4 mm. long; short-staminate flowers with 5 antisepalous stamens up to 4 mm long and 5 antipetalous ones up to 2·5 mm long; filaments slightly connate at base; anthers obcordate; carpels of long-staminate flowers up to 2·5 mm long, those of short-staminate flowers up to 6 mm long.
Fruit: obliquely ovoid follicle, to 2 × 1·2 cm, apex acute; dehiscence by irregular basal slits; pericarp red when mature.
Seed: narrowly ovoid, slightly compressed, totally enclosed within a pale juicy aril; up to 1·3 × 0·7 cm.
Habitat: qoodland, riverine forest and lowland forest; altitude range 0–1000 m.
Region: Guinée to the Sudan, to Angola, Congo, N. Rhodesia and Tanganyika.