Melia azedarach Linn

The bead tree or chinaberry (Melia azedarach) has round orange fruits, around 1.5 cm across, hang in large, loose bunches on the leafless tree through the winter. The hard seeds inside them were used as beads. The tree’s timber is valuable and the poisonous fruits and dried leaves can be used as an insecticide.��In the late 18th and early 19th centuries the East India Company controlled much of the Indian subcontinent. Keen to exploit and export valuable natural commodities, the Company set out to record the flora of India and commissioned Indian artists to create detailed botanical illustrations. Many of the plants were known through their use in Ayurvedic medicine. One of the world’s oldest medicinal systems, it has been practised in India for 3,000 years.           Drawings of Indian plants and trees later named at the Royal Botanical Gardens Kew