Botanical Name - Prosopis spicigera

----- Prosopis, Linn.; F.B.I. II-287. P. spicigera, Linn.; F.B.I. II-288. Brandi's Ind. Trees, 260. Gamble's Ind. Timbers, 288. Vern. jhand, Hind. jammi, jambi, Tel. Sumri, Saunder, Mar.

----- A moderate-sized deciduous thorny tree. Bark thick, grey, rough, with deep longitudinal fissures and horizontal cracks. Branches and branchlets armed with scattered broad-based, conical prickles 1/8 - 1/4 in. long. Leaves bipinnate; pinnae and leaflets opposite; pinnae 2, 1-2 in. long; leaflets 7-10 pairs, 1/4 - 1/2 in. Spikes slender, 2-3 in. long, in short axillary panicles. Calyx minute, campanulate. Petals 5, ligulate, sub-coherent at the base. Stamens 10, free, exserted; anthers tipped with a gland. Ovary stalked, many-ovuled. Pod coriaceous, indehiscent, pendulous, linear, 5-10, in. long, filled with a dry sweetish pulp, contracted between the seeds.

----- A common tree found throughout the State usually in open places, on black cotton soil or stony ground, but rarely grows in close forest. It abounds in the Punjab, but owing to incessant lopping is seen generally as a large shrub; when protected it grows to 60 ft. in height, and 9 ft. in circumference, It never reaches such a large size in the Hyderabad forests, as would afford a square log of more than 9 inches. The wood is very hard; sap-wood large, whitish, perishable; heart-wood purplish-brown, tough but not durable, liable to dry-not and readily eaten by insects. It makes an excellent fuel. Weight about 58 lbs. per c. ft. The pods are used as fodder for cattle and goats. They contain a quantity of a mealy farinaceous pulp which has a sweetish taste and is eaten by the natives. The " Jammi " is a very useful tree. It has a rapid growth, coppices well and owing to its very long tap-wood manages to survive and grow in the most dry and unfavourable situations. Gamble mentions two specimens of thetap-root of this tree, one 86 ft. long and the other 64 ft.