Bengal quince
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Bengal quince ( Aegle marmelos ) |
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| ( L. ) Corrêa |
The Bengal quince ( Aegle marmelos ), also Madjobaum , wiring harness or mucus apple and Indian quince called, is a flowering plant in the family of Rutaceae (Rutaceae). The aromatic fruits are used as fruits and many parts of the plant are used medicinally.
description
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Appearance and foliage leaf
Aegle marmelos is a deciduous, small to medium-sized, thorny tree . Cultivated specimens can reach heights of growth of more than 8-10 meters. The trunk soon branches out above the ground. The slightly furrowed bark is brown-gray, soft, irregularly furrowed on young twigs; it is thicker with age and comes off in small plates. Injured branches give off a transparent sap ( gum ), similar to gum arabic , which dries up in long, hanging threads. The branches can be divided into long shoots with internodes of 3–5 centimeters in length and short shoots that are only 1–3 centimeters long and have numerous leaves.
The alternately arranged and stalked leaves are accompanied by one or two thorns on the long shoots. The thorns are 1.5 to 3 inches long. The mostly bald petiole is about 3–8 inches long. The leaf or leaflet stalks are sometimes short-winged. The leaves are very variable, very sunny leaves can have a reddish color. The leaf blade is pinnate unpaired, with three, rarely five leaflets . The lateral leaflets are very short stalked, while the terminal leaflet is longer stalked. "Joints" ( pulvini ) may be present on the stalk of the leaflet . The leaflets are ovate to elliptical with a length of 4–12 centimeters and a width of 2–6 centimeters, less often obovate, with a rounded to wedge-shaped base and a pointed or pointed, often rounded and sometimes indented upper end. And the edge is slightly to slightly serrated or notched. The leaflets are glabrous and thin, the central vein protrudes on the underside.
blossom
The hermaphrodite flowers stand individually or in groups of four to seven in loose cymes in the leaf axils and at the end of the branches. The flower stalk is slightly hairy. The greenish-white and fragrant flowers have a diameter of 2 centimeters and are radially symmetrical with a double flower envelope . The hairy sepals are fused into a flat, cup-shaped, slightly five-lobed calyx. The petals are oblong to obovate, overlapping in the bud, then later spread out. They are plump and provided with oil glands. A nectar disc ( discus ) is missing or only small. The narrow egg-shaped, from eight to twenty carpels composite, Upper permanent ovary flows seamlessly into almost sedentary, large and oblong-knaufige scar over. The stamens , which are around 30 to 50, have numerous stamens that are only half as long as the elongated anthers and they are sometimes fused together in several groups.
Fruit and seeds
With a size of 5–10 centimeters, round to pear-shaped or ellipsoidal, multi-seeded fruits, berries (armored berries , amphisarca) turn greenish to yellow-brownish in color when ripe. The relatively smooth, bare, slightly rough, sometimes scabbed, blotchy and hard shell is about 3–4 millimeters thick. Underneath is the orange-yellow and pasty-fibrous, sticky and sweet pulp and in the segmented core, the individual seeds are each in a “sack” made of sticky, transparent and tough slime (rubber) that solidifies as it dries. As the pulp dries out, it becomes hard and dark orange.
The approximately 10 to 15, 8-10 millimeters large and flattened seeds are surrounded by woolly, white hair. Each seed contains a straight embryo and large cotyledons , but no endosperm . Cultivated varieties can have significantly larger (up to 20 centimeters in diameter) fruits with a soft skin, and they also contain few seeds and no sticky components.
Chromosome number
The number of chromosomes is 2n = 18.
distribution
Aegle marmelos is native to the southern edge of the Himalayas from Pakistan in the west via India and further to the southeast in Bangladesh , Myanmar and India . It grows in forests in the monsoon climate , at altitudes of 600 to 1200 meters. The Bengal quince is widely cultivated in Southeast Asia .
Systematics
This species was first published by Carl von Linné as Crataeva marmelos . Corrêa established the genus Aegle in 1800 under the name Aegle marmelos . The specific epithet marmelos goes back to the Portuguese word marmelos for "quince" and refers to the fragrant and sweet-tasting fruits. The generic name Aegle is the Latinized form of the Greek Aigle , one of the Heliaden from Greek mythology.
Swingle and Reece gave the African Aeglopsis , Afraegle and Balsamocitrus as closely related genera , a grouping that is also supported by recent DNA analyzes. In contrast, the subtribes Balsamocitrinae and tribe Citreae, in which Swingle and Reece classify Aegle as marmelos , probably do not represent monophyletic units.
use
After the very hard skin has been removed with a knife, the fruit is eaten fresh as a fruit, often dusted with sugar in Tamil Nadu . It tastes remotely apple-like, but is quite sour. The juice is processed into desserts, jam or chutney . The young leaves are used as a vegetable or spice. Fragrant oil can be extracted from flowers and bark. The sticky substance from the “seed sack” is occasionally used as an adhesive. Fruits, leaves, flowers and bark are also used medicinally. In Thailand the dried fruits are boiled in water and drunk as tea (Ma Tum tea).
Religious use
In Hinduism , the bel tree is sacred to Shiva . Its three-part leaves are compared to Shiva's trident and are often offered to Shiva, as is the fruit.
literature
- TK Lim: Edible Medicinal And Non-Medicinal Plants. Volume 4, Fruits , Springer, 2012, ISBN 978-94-007-4052-5 , pp. 594-618.
Web links
- Aegle marmelos in Wild Fruits , Kalyani Publishers, New Delhi, India .
- Aeglos marmelos at Useful Tropical Plants.
- Aegle marmelos at Pitchandikulam Forest Virtual Herbarium, accessed September 12, 2019.
- Bael at idtools.org, Citrus ID, accessed September 12, 2019.
- The Bengali Quince: Aegle marmelos on flora-obscura.de, accessed on September 15, 2019.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h W. Reuther, HJ Webber, LD Batchelor (ed.): The Citrus Industry . tape 1 , Chapter 3, 1967 ( ucr.edu [accessed April 16, 2010]). The Citrus Industry ( Memento of the original from June 4, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , online Citrus Variety Collection: UCR, accessed September 12, 2019.
- ^ A b c Hassan-ud-Din, Shahina A. Ghazanfar: Aegle . In: SI Ali, M. Qaiser (Ed.): Flora of Pakistan . tape 132 . Missouri Botanical Garden Press, S. 27 ( eFloras.org ).
- ↑ a b c d e f Dianxiang Zhang , Thomas G. Hartley: Aegle . In: Wu Zhengyi, Peter H. Raven (Ed.): Flora of China . tape 11 . Missouri Botanical Garden Press, St. Louis, S. 96 ( eFloras.org - 1994+).
- ↑ a b c d e f Julia F. Morton: Fruits of warm climates . Miami, FL 1987, p. 187-190 ( online ).
- ↑ K. Bhar, S. Mondal, P. Suresh: An Eye-Catching Review of Aegle marmelos L. (Golden Apple). In: Pharmacognosy Journal. Vol 11, Issue 2, 2019, 207–224, doi: 10.5530 / pj.2019.11.34 .
- ↑ Aegle marmelos at Tropicos.org. In: IPCN Chromosome Reports . Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis
- ↑ Helmut Genaust: Etymological dictionary of botanical plant names. 3rd, completely revised and expanded edition. Nikol, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-937872-16-7 (reprint from 1996).
- ↑ Bernard E. Pfeil, Michael D. Crisp: The age and biogeography of Citrus and the orange subfamily (Rutaceae: Aurantioideae) in Australia and New Caledonia . In: American Journal of Botany . tape 95 , no. 12 , 2008, p. 1612-1631 .
