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Herbs & Plants

Kukui Nut Tree ( Aleurites moluccanus)

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Botanical Name : Aleurites moluccanus
Family: Euphorbiaceae
Genus: Aleurites
Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Magnoliophyta
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order: Malpighiales
Species: A. moluccana
Synonyms: Aleurites javanicus, Aleurites pentaphyllus, Aleurites trilobus, Jatropha moluccana

Common Names:Candleberry,  Kemiri, Varnish tree, Nuez de la India or Kukui nut tree.Kukui Nut Oil, Candlenut, Indian-walnut.

Vernacular Names : Hindi:  Jangli akhrot,  Akhrot • Marathi:  Ramakrot,  Akhod, Japhala, Ranakot • Tamil:  Nattu akrottu, Woodooga • Malayalam: Akrottu, Akshotam, Karankolam, Vadam • Telugu: Uduga, Natu akrotu • Kannada: Akroda, Natakrodu, Arkod, Naadu aakrotu • Oriya: Akshota • Sanskrit: Akharota, Akhota, Akshota, Asphotaka, Gudashaya

Habitat:Its native range is impossible to establish precisely because of early spread by humans, and the tree is now distributed throughout the New and Old World tropics.We can say Candle Nut is an evergreen tree  and native to Indo-Malaysia.

Description:
The Candlenut (Aleurites moluccana), is a flowering tree. It grows to a height of 15–25 m (49–82 ft), with wide spreading or pendulous branches. The leaves are pale green, simple and ovate, or trilobed or rarely 5-lobed, with an acute apex, 10–20 cm (3.9–7.9 in) long. The nut is round, 4–6 cm (1.6–2.4 in) in diameter; the seed inside has a very hard seed coat and a high oil content, which allows its use as a candle  hence its name.

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It is a highly domesticated tree. It grows to a height of 15–25 metres, with wide spreading or pendulous branches. The leaves are pale green, simple and ovate, or 3-5 lobed, with a pointed tip, 10–20 cm long. Candle Nut has both male and  female flowers on the same plant. The?greenish-white, fragrant flowers are arranged in a 10–15 cm panicled cyme at the end of branches, with many  small male flowers surrounding the?female?flowers.?The?flowers are?white to creamy in color, with five free petals, oblong in shape and up to1.3 cm long. Male flowers are longer and thinner than female flowers.

The plant typically flowers in the spring, although flowers  can be found nearly any time of year in many areas. The nut is round, 4–6 cm diameter – the seed inside has a very hard seed coat and a high oil content, which allows its use as a candle, hence its name. In Ancient Hawai?i, the nuts, named kukui were burned to provide light. The nuts were strung in a row on a palm leaf midrib, lit one end, and burned one by one every 15 minutes or so. Flowering: March-April.

Edible & Other Uses:
The nut is often used cooked in Indonesian and Malaysian cuisine, where it is called kemiri in Indonesian or buah keras in Malay. On the island of Java in Indonesia, it is used to make a thick sauce that is eaten with vegetables and rice. In the Philippines, the fruit and tree are traditionally known as Lumbang after which Lumban, a lakeshore town in Laguna is named although the name Jatropha has since gained more popularity. Outside of Southeast Asia, macadamia nuts are sometimes substituted for candlenuts when they are not available, as they have a similarly high oil content and texture when pounded. The flavor, however, is quite different, as the candlenut is much more bitter. A Hawaiian condiment known as ?Inamona is made from roasted kukui (candlenuts) mixed into a paste with salt. ?Inamona is a key ingredient in traditional Hawaiian poke. Because the nuts contains saponin and phorbol, they are mildly toxic when raw.

In Ancient Hawaii, kukui nuts were burned to provide light. The nuts were strung in a row on a palm leaf midrib, lit one end, and burned one by one every 15 minutes or so. This led to their use as a measure of time. One could instruct someone to return home before the second nut burned out. Hawaiians also extracted the oil from the nut and burned it in a stone oil lamp called a kukui hele po (light, darkness goes) with a wick made of kapa cloth.

Hawaiians also had many other uses for the tree, including: leis from the shells, leaves and flowers; ink for tattoos from charred nuts; a varnish with the oil; and fishermen would chew the nuts and spit them on the water to break the surface tension and remove reflections, giving them greater underwater visibility. A red-brown dye made from the inner bark was used on kapa and aho (Touchardia latifolia cordage). A coating of kukui oil helped preserve ?upena (fishing nets). The nohona wa?a (seats), pale (gunwales) of wa?a (outrigger canoes) were made from the wood. The trunk was sometimes used to make smaller canoes used for fishing. Kukui was named the state tree of Hawai’i on 1 May 1959 due to its multitude of uses. It also represents the island of Moloka?i, whose symbolic color is the silvery green of the kukui leaf.

In Tonga, even today, ripe nuts, named tuitui are pounded into a paste, tukilamulamu, and used as soap or shampoo. As recently as 1993, candlenuts were chewed into sweet-scented emollient utilized during a traditional funerary ritual in the outlying islands of the Kingdom of Tonga.

Dead wood of candlenut is eaten by a larva of a coleoptera called Agrionome fairmairei. This larva is eaten by some people.

Modern cultivation is mostly for the oil. In plantations, each tree will produce 30–80 kg (66–180 lb) of nuts, and the nuts yield 15 to 20% of their weight in oil. Most of the oil is used locally rather than figuring in international trade.

Mythology
In Hawai’i the kukui is a symbol of enlightenment, protection and peace. It was said that Kamapua?a, the hog-man fertility demi-god, could transform into a kukui tree. One of the legends told of a woman who, despite her best efforts to please her husband, was routinely beaten. Finally, the husband beat her to death and buried her under a kukui tree. Being a kind and just woman, she was given new life, and the husband was eventually killed

Medicinal Uses:

Several parts of the plant have been used in traditional medicine in most of the areas where it is native. The oil is an irritant and purgative and sometimes used like castor oil. The seed kernels have a laxative effect. In Japan its bark has been used on tumors. In Sumatra, , pounded seeds, burned with charcoal, are applied around the navel for costiveness. In Malaya, the pulped kernels or boiled leaves are used in poultices for headache, fevers, ulcers, swollen joints, and gonorrhea. In Java, the bark is used for bloody diarrhea or dysentery. In Sumatra, pounded seeds, burned with charcoal, are applied around the navel for cositiveness. Bark juice with coconut milk is used for sprue. The fruit is eaten to produce aphrodisiac stimulation and the gum from the bark is chewed for the same reason. The oil is sometimes used medicinally similar to castor oil, as well as a laxative. In Southeast Asia, the oil is sometimes applied topically to treat headaches, fevers and swollen joints. To treat sores or infections in the mouth and to soothe the gums of teething babies, healers pick green kukui nuts in the morning when the sap is running. They separate the stem from the husk of the nut, and a small pool of sap fills the resulting hole. They apply the sap topically on sores or mix it with water to make a mouthwash. Its partly dried sap is used to treat thrush (ea) and its leaves are used as poultice for swellings and infections.

Candlenut oil is also used as a hair stimulant or additive to hair treatment systems. The seed kernels have a laxative effect. In Japan its bark has been used on tumors. In Sumatra, pounded seeds, burned with charcoal, are applied around the navel for costiveness. In Malaya, the pulped kernels or boiled leaves are used in poultices for headache, fevers, ulcers, swollen joints, and gonorrhea. In Java, the bark is used for bloody diarrhea or dysentery. In Hawaii, the flowers and the sap at the top of the husk (when just removed from the branch) were used to treat e’a (oral candidiasis) in children.

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Common medicinal Uses: Acne * Burns/SunBurn * Eczema * Hair Care/Shampoo * Natural Skin Care-Oils & Herbs * Psoriasis *

Kukui oil is expeller expressed from the nuts, and is light yellow with an amber tint. The oil pentrates skin deeply to hydrate and soften and is used an an emollient in skin care. Kukui oil is used to treat a variety of skin ailments such as eczema, psorisis and burned or damaged skin. Kukui is an excellent botanical source of fatty acids and antioxidents, as well as Vitamins A,C and E.

Disclaimer:The information presented herein is intended for educational purposes only. Individual results may vary, and before using any supplements, it is always advisable to consult with your own health care provider.


Resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleurites_moluccana
http://www.flowersofindia.net/catalog/slides/Candle%20Nut.html
http://www.anniesremedy.com/herb_detail467.php

http://www.herbnet.com/Herb%20Uses_C.htm

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Categories
Dry Fruit Herbs & Plants

Hazelnut(Corylus avellana)

Botanical Name :Corylus avellana
Family: Betulaceae
Genus: Corylus
Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Magnoliophyta
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order: Fagales
Species: C. avellana
Common Names:  Hazelnut ,
Vernacular names:-
Cymraeg: Cneuen gyll
Dansk: Almindelig Hassel
Deutsch: Gemeine Hasel
Eesti: Harilik sarapuu
English: Common Hazel
Français: Noisetier
Italiano: Nocciolo
Magyar: Közönséges vagy európai mogyoró

Habitat :It is  native to Europe and western Asia, from the British Isles south to Iberia, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, north to central Scandinavia, and east to the central Ural Mountains, the Caucasus, and northwestern Iran.

Description:
Common hazel is typically a shrub reaching 3–8 m tall, but can reach 15 m. The leaves are deciduous, rounded, 6–12 cm long and across, softly hairy on both surfaces, and with a double-serrate margin. The flowers are produced very early in spring, before the leaves, and are monoecious with single-sex wind-pollinated catkins. Male catkins are pale yellow and 5–12 cm long, while female catkins are very small and largely concealed in the buds with only the bright red 1–3 mm long styles visible. The fruit is a nut, produced in clusters of one to five together, each nut held in a short leafy involucre (“husk”) which encloses about three quarters of the nut. The nut is roughly spherical to oval, 15–20 mm long and 12–20 mm broad (larger, up to 25 mm long, in some cultivated selections), yellow-brown with a pale scar at the base. The nut falls out of the involucre when ripe, about 7–8 months after pollination.

You click to see different pictures of Corylus avellana

It is readily distinguished from the closely related Filbert (Corylus maxima) by the short involucre; in the Filbert the nut is fully enclosed by a beak-like involucre longer than the nut.

You may click to see also List of Lepidoptera that feed on hazels :

The leaves provide food for many animals, including Lepidoptera such as the case-bearer moth Coleophora anatipennella. Caterpillars of the concealer moth Alabonia geoffrella have been found feeding inside dead Common Hazel twigs. The fruit are possibly even more important animal food, both for invertebrates adapted to circumvent the shell (usually by ovipositing in the female flowers, which also gives protection to the offspring) and for vertebrates which manage to crack them open (such as squirrels and corvids).

The scientific name avellana derives from the town of Avella in Italy, and was selected by Linnaeus from Leonhart Fuchs’s De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (1542), where the species was described as “Avellana nux sylvestris” (“wild nut of Avella”).

Common Hazel is cultivated for its nuts. The name hazelnut applies to the nuts of any of the species of the genus Corylus. This hazelnut or cob nut, the kernel of the seed, is edible and used raw or roasted, or ground into a paste. The cob is round, compared with the longer filbert nut.

The hazelnut is the nut, of the hazel and is also known as the cobnut. It is roughly spherical to oval, about 15–25 mm long and 10–15 mm in diameter, with an outer fibrous husk surrounding a smooth shell. The nut falls out of the husk when ripe, about 7–8 months after pollination. The kernel of the seed is edible and used raw or roasted, or ground into a paste. The seed has a thin, dark brown skin which has a bitter flavour and is sometimes removed before cooking.
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There are many cultivars of the Hazel, including ‘Barcelona’, ‘Butler’, ‘Casina’, ‘Clark’ ‘Cosford’, ‘Daviana’, ‘Delle Langhe’, ‘England’, ‘Ennis’, Fillbert, ‘Halls Giant’, ‘Jemtegaard’, ‘Kent Cob’, ‘Lewis’, ‘Tokolyi’, ‘Tonda Gentile’, ‘Tonda di Giffoni’, ‘Tonda Romana’, ‘Wanliss Pride’, and ‘Willamette’.[8] Some of these are grown for specific qualities of the nut including large nut size, and early and late fruiting cultivars, whereas other are grown as pollinators. The majority of commercial Hazelnuts are propagated from root sprouts. Some cultivars are of hybrid origin between Common Hazel and Filbert.

Hazelnuts, with shell (left), without shell (right)
Common Hazel is cultivated for its nuts in commercial orchards in Europe, Turkey, Iran and Caucasus. The name “hazelnut” applies to the nuts of any of the species of the genus Corylus. This hazelnut or cobnut, the kernel of the seed, is edible and used raw or roasted, or ground into a paste. The seed has a thin, dark brown skin which has a bitter flavour and is sometimes removed before cooking. The top producer of hazelnuts, by a large margin, is Turkey, specifically the [[ORDU Province]. Turkish hazelnut production of 625,000 tonnes accounts for approximately 75% of worldwide production.

Cultivation:
The Common Hazel is a shrub common in many European woodlands. It is an important component of the hedgerows that were the traditional field boundaries in lowland England. The wood was traditionally grown as coppice, the poles cut being used for wattle-and-daub building and agricultural fencing.

Medicinal Uses:
Hazelnuts are rich in protein and unsaturated fat. Moreover, they contain significant amounts of thiamine and vitamin B6, as well as smaller amounts of other B vitamins. Additionally, 1 cup (237 ml) of hazelnut flour has 20 g of carbohydrates, 12 g of which are fibre.

Hazelnut oil is a good carrier oil in aromatherapy applications, it has a slightly astringent action that is good for all skin types. The name “hazelnut” applies to the nuts of any of the species of the genus Corylus. This hazelnut or cobnut, the kernel of the seed, is edible and used raw or roasted, or ground into a paste.  Hazelnuts are extensively used in confectionery, hazelnut butter is being promoted as a more nutritious spread than its peanut butter counterpart, though it has a higher fat content.

Yellow color contains vitamins, minerals, protein slightly astringent, good for all skin types. Absorbed quickly into the skin, it has tonifying and astringent action. Good for those with slightly oily skins, dry, devitalized, or sun damaged. A lovely carrier oil for aromatherapy skin care blends.

They are under the dominion of Mercury. The parted kernels made into an electuary, or the milk drawn from the kernels with mead or honeyed water, is very good to help an old cough; and being parched, and a little pepper put to them and drank, digests the distillations of rheum from the head. The dried husks and shells, to the weight of two drams, taken in red wine, stays lasks and women’s courses, and so doth the red skin that covers the kernels, which is more effectual to stay women’s courses.

Disclaimer:The information presented herein is intended for educational purposes only. Individual results may vary, and before using any supplements, it is always advisable to consult with your own health care provider.

Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corylus_avellana
http://www.anniesremedy.com/herb_detail83.php
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Corylus_avellana
http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Corylus_avellana

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