A multipurpose tree, it is often cultivated as avenue and park trees, commonly grown as a shade tree for other crops. It is particularly valued for its timber, but also supplies food, medicines and a gum. Medicinally, the plant is used in the treatment of diarrhoea, stomach pain, and sore throat. A decoction of the inner bark and fresh leaves is used as a treatment for diarrhoea. A brew of small sections of the bark is taken to treat stomach-ache. An infusion of the leaves is used as a laxative. The pods can be eaten and the pulp can be made into drink. Grounded up seedpods used as raw material for making biofuels. Also yields an inferior gum used as substitute for Gum Arabic. Nitrogen-rich pruning’s used as green manure to improve soil on agricultural and pastoral lands.

വയറിളക്കം, വയറുവേദന, തൊണ്ടയുറുത്തൽ എന്നീ രോഗങ്ങൾക്ക് ഔഷധമായി ഉപയോഗിക്കുന്നു.

Medium sized to large trees, to 25 m high, bark yellowish-brown, rough, deeply fissured; branchlets pubescent. Leaves alternate, bipinnate, stipulate; stipules lateral, small, lanceolate, densely pubescent, cauducous; rachis 19-24 cm long, stout, pubescent, pulvinate, glands between pinnae pairs on the upper side; pinnae 6-7 pairs, 3-15 cm long, pulvinate, slender, grooved above, pubescent, 2-glands at the top of the pulvinous on the upper side and one between each pair of leaflets; leaflets 6-16, opposite, subsessile, estipellate; lamina oblong, or ovate-oblong, base obliquely truncate, apex obtuse, entire margin, glabrous above with hairs beneath. Flowers in dense heads, bisexual, subsessile, pinkish-white; calyx 5 lobed, 3-5 mm long, funnel shaped, pilose, broadly triangular; corolla lobes 5, ovate, 8-13 mm long, pinkish, funnel shaped; numerous stamens, connate at the base in a tube one-third as long as the corolla tube, apex pink, base white; ovary superior, glabrous, sessile, stigma minute. Fruit is an indehiscent pod, slightly flattened and depressed between the seeds, sutures thickened; epicarp thin, crustaceous, glossy brown, mesocarp pulpy, light brown, sticky; endocarp firmly crustaceous, forming continuous septa between the seeds; smooth, brown and glossy seeds.