Melanorrhoea
(from melas, black, and rheo, to flow; the tree, when wounded, yields a black juice). Black Varnish Tree. ORD. Anacardiaceae. A genus comprising a couple of species of very large-growing stove evergreen trees, natives of Birma and the Malayan Peninsula. Flowers in axillary panicles; sepals five, cohering valvately into a five-nerved, caducous calyptra; petals five or six, linear-oblong, imbricated. Leaves alternate exstipulate, simple, entire, leathery. The undermentioned species thrives in a peat and loam compost. Propagated by cuttings of ripe shoots, with the leaves intact, placed in sand, under a glass, and in bottom heat.
M. usitatissima (most useful). fl. red. l. obovate, very blunt, villous. h. 100ft. Hindostan, 1828. This species yields a very valuable black varnish. "This is obtained by the process of tapping; short joints of bamboo, closed at the bottom end, being thrust into holes made in the trunk, and left for about two days, when they become full of a whitish thick juice, which turns black when exposed to the air, and requires to be kept under water in order to preserve it" ("Treasury of Botany").