Mallotus garrettii Airy Shaw

The dried material smells of fenugreek.

Small trees 4-8 m tall. Branchlets and leaves glabrous. Stipules triangular, ca. 3 mm, deciduous; petiole slender, 2-9 cm; leaf blade ovate or oblong-ovate, 7-15 × 3.5-8.5 cm, papery, abaxially glaucous, sparsely glandular-scaly, base rotund or narrowly cordate, with 2 basal glands, margin entire or repand, apex acuminate; basal veins 3, lateral veins 4 or 5 pairs. Male inflorescences terminal or axillary, unbranched, 5-12 cm; bracts ovate, ca. 3 mm. Male flowers 3-5-fascicled; pedicel 1-3 mm; calyx lobes 3, ovate, ca. 2 mm, pilose; stamens 30-40. Female inflorescences 11-13 cm, pilose. Capsule 3-locular, coccus subglobose, ca. 8 mm in diam., sparsely glandular-scaly and shortly softly spiny; persistent style ca. 4 mm, connate at middle, plumose. Seeds globose, ca. 5 mm in diam., brownish marbled. Fl. Jun-Oct, fr. Oct-Dec.

S Yunnan [Laos, N Thailand].

Mountain valleys, forests; 1000-1500 m.