The Moodilla (Barringtonia speciosa) is another tree which attracts the eye of the traveller, not less from the remarkably shaped fruit which it bears than from the contrast between its dark glossy leaves and the delicate flowers which they surround.  The latter are white, tipped with crimson, but the petals drop off early, and the stamens, of which there are nearly a hundred to each flower, when they fall to the ground might almost be mistaken for painters’ brushes.  The tree (as its name implies) loves the shore of the sea, and its large quadrangular fruits, of pyramidal form, being protected by a hard fibrous covering, are tossed by the waves till they root themselves on the beach.  It grows freely at the mouths of the principal rivers on the west coast, and several noble specimens of it are found near the fort of Colombo.

The Goda-kaduru, or Strychnos nux-vomica is abundant in these prodigious forests, and has obtained an European celebrity on account of its producing the poisonous seeds from which strychnine is extracted.  Its fruit, which it exhibits in great profusion, is of the size and colour of a small orange, within which a pulpy substance envelopes the seeds that form the “nux-vomica” of commerce.  It grows in great luxuriance in the vicinity of the ruined tanks throughout the Wanny, and on the west coast as far south as Negombo.  It is singular that in this genus there should be found two plants, the seeds of one being not only harmless but wholesome, and that of the other the most formidable of known poisons.[1] Amongst the Malabar immigrants there is a belief that the seeds of the goda-kaduru, if habitually taken, will act as a prophylactic against the venom of the cobra de capello; and I have been assured that the coolies coming from the coast of India accustom themselves to eat a single seed per day in order to acquire the desired protection from the effects of this serpent’s bite.[2]

[Footnote 1:  The tettan-cotta, the use of which is described in Vol.  II.  Pt. ix. ch. i. p. 411, when applied by the natives to clarify muddy water, is the seed of another species of strychnos, S. potatorum.  The Singhalese name is ingini (tettan-cotta is Tamil).]

[Footnote 2:  In India, the distillers of arrack from the juice of the coco-nut palm are said, by Roxburgh, to introduce the seeds of the strychnus, in order to increase the intoxicating power of the spirit.]

In these forests the Euphorbia[1], which we are accustomed to see only as a cactus-like green-house plant, attains the size and strength of a small timber-tree; its quadrangular stem becomes circular and woody, and its square fleshy shoots take the form of branches, or rise with a rounded top as high as thirty feet.[2]

[Footnote 1:  E. Antiquorun.]