Calophyllum inophyllum Seeds | Tamanu

Beach Calophyllum (Calophyllum inophyllum) with glossy rounded leaves and round green fruits on a coastal tree — Tamanu (*Calophyllum inophyllum*): Calophyllaceae, the sacred oil tree of the Pacific shorelines.

LATIN NAME: Calophyllum inophyllum

COMMON NAME: Tamanu, Beach Calophyllum

Plant Profile

Tamanu is a broad-crowned, slow evergreen tree of the shorelines of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, growing eight to twenty metres with a low, leaning, often horizontal habit shaped by the trade winds it has faced for centuries. The leaves are thick, glossy and rounded, with the fine, close parallel veins that mark the genus, and the white, fragrant flowers carry clusters of yellow stamens. The round fruits are golf-ball sized, green and then yellow-brown, each holding a single nut whose kernel is the source of the famous oil.

It grows on the sand itself, above the tide line but within salt spray of it, and it is a standard feature of Pacific beach forests, where it has been planted and tended by coastal communities for as long as the oil has been pressed.

Science & Biotechnology

The kernel oil is the species’ scientific fortune: a thick, greenish, deeply aromatic fixed oil used across Polynesia and Southeast Asia as a skin-healing dressing, and the subject of a genuine research literature on wound-healing and anti-inflammatory activity, with the oil’s unusual lipid profile part of the interest. Separately, the genus drew worldwide attention when calanolide compounds, first isolated from a related Malaysian species, entered anti-HIV drug development, putting the whole family into the pharmacological spotlight. The seed oil has also been trialled as a biodiesel feedstock, since the trees fruit heavily on land that grows nothing else, an angle that has produced plantation studies in several tropical countries.

In its home islands the tree carries cultural weight as well: sacred groves, canoe timber and meeting-place shade, uses recorded in the ethnobotany of the Pacific.

Uses & Benefits

As a coastal tree it is close to indispensable: a dense, salt-proof, wind-firm shade and windbreak for beaches and seafront gardens where almost every other broadleaf fails. Inland it wants frost-free warmth and good light, and it makes a broad, handsome, long-lived specimen with the bonus of fragrant flowering.

The oil itself is a living craft tradition: kernels are sun-dried, then cold-pressed into the dark green tamanu oil sold for skin care worldwide, a process any grower in the right climate can replicate on a small scale. In island cultures the wood has served boat-building where harder timber was scarce.

Growing from Seed

Clean the pulp from ripe fruit and sow the nut fresh, half-buried in a free-draining sandy mix and kept at 25 to 30 °C and evenly moist; germination is slow and can take six to ten weeks, so keep the pot going through a full season before giving up. The seedlings push a thick, glossy shoot early.

Grow them in full sun with steady water for the first two years, potting on as the taproot develops. Plant out into sandy or coralline soil in a frost-free coastal position, giving the broad crown room, and water through the first two dry seasons. After establishment it takes salt, wind and drought in its stride and needs nothing further.

Our Take

The tamanu of the Pacific beaches: salt-proof shade, fragrant flowers, and a pressed oil with a real research file. The easiest handsome tree on the harshest ground.

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