''Vernicia montana'', the mu oil tree, or chine wood oil tree, is a species of ''

Vernicia ''Vernicia'' is a genus in the spurge family Euphorbiaceae, first described as a genus in 1790. It is native to China, Japan, India, and Indochina.Flora of Thailand/ref> The species have often been included within the related genus ''Aleurites''. ...

'' in the spurge family, native to

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...

(including

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

) and southern

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. It is a medium-sized

deciduous In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, aft ...

tree reaching a height . The Latin

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''montana'' refers to mountains or coming from mountains.Archibald William Smith The leaves are large with three lobes. The

monoecious Monoecy (; adj. monoecious ) is a sexual system in seed plants where separate male and female cones or flowers are present on the same plant. It is a monomorphic sexual system alongside gynomonoecy, andromonoecy and trimonoecy. Monoecy is conne ...

white-petaled flowers emerged as

inflorescence An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed o ...

s, containing both male and female flowers. The fruit is a globular

drupe In botany, a drupe (or stone fruit) is an indehiscent fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin, and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a single shell (the ''pit'', ''stone'', or '' pyrena'') of hardened endocarp with a seed (''kernel'') ...

with wrinkled skin that turns from green to yellow upon ripening. Each fruit contains 3 seeds, rich in oil.

Cultivation and uses

''Vernicia montana'' is grown mostly for the seeds from which a

varnish Varnish is a clear transparent hard protective coating or film. It is not a stain. It usually has a yellowish shade from the manufacturing process and materials used, but it may also be pigmented as desired, and is sold commercially in various ...

is made similar to the

tung tree ''Vernicia fordii'', usually known as the tung tree (, ''tóng'') is a species of flowering plant in the spurge family native to southern China, Myanmar, and northern Vietnam. It is a small to medium-sized deciduous tree growing to 20 m tall, wit ...

. The oil is prized as a wood finish.Thomas McKeon, Douglas Hayes, David Hildebrand, Randall Weselake (Editors) As the tree prefers well drained, sandy soils, the trees are grown on hillside plantations in northern Vietnam. In nature, ''V montana'' can be found at the margins of primary forests. The wood is also harvested.

Gallery

File:木油桐（千年桐）Vernicia montana 20210326150211 02.jpg, Glands and veins File:木油桐（千年桐）Vernicia montana 20210401090952 02.jpg, Female flower File:木油桐（千年桐）Vernicia montana 20210326150211 04.jpg, Male flower File:木油桐（千年桐）Vernicia montana 20210326150211 05.jpg, In full bloom File:木油桐（千年桐）Vernicia montana 20210326150211 10.jpg, Inflorescence

References

* Nguyen, Duong Van. ''Medicinal Plants of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos''. Santa Monica, CA: Mekong, 1993.

External links

Aleuritideae Plants described in 1790 Trees of Myanmar Trees of China Trees of Taiwan Trees of Thailand Trees of Vietnam {{Euphorbiaceae-stub