Macaranga peltata is a plant found in northern Thailand

Thailand

Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

 and India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. It is one of the most widely occurring early successional woody species in Sri Lanka, specially in low country wet zone. Some of the many common names include kenda or kanda in Sri Lanka and chandada in India.

Description

It is a resinous tree, up to 10 metres (32.8 ft) tall. Young parts are velvet hairy. Leaves measure 20 to 50 cm (7.9 to 19.7 ) by 12 to 21 cm (4.7 to 8.3 ), are alternately arranged, circular or broadly ovate, entire or minutely dentate, and palmately 9-nerved. The leaf stalk is attached on the lower surface of the leaf, not on the base.

Yellow-green flowers occur in long panicle

Panicle

A panicle is a compound raceme, a loose, much-branched indeterminate inflorescence with pedicellate flowers attached along the secondary branches; in other words, a branched cluster of flowers in which the branches are racemes....

s in leaf axils in the months of January to February. Male flowers are minute, numerous, and clustered in the axils of large bract

Bract

In botany, a bract is a modified or specialized leaf, especially one associated with a reproductive structure such as a flower, inflorescence axis, or cone scale. Bracts are often different from foliage leaves. They may be smaller, larger, or of a different color, shape, or texture...

s. One round, black seed is in a spherical capsule 4 to 5 mm across.

Uses

Kenda leaves are commonly used for flavoring in Sri Lanka. Halapa dough is often flattened on a kenda leaf to soak in the flavor. Kenda leaves are used to wrap jaggery

Jaggery

Jaggery is a traditional unrefined non-centrifugal whole cane sugar consumed in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. It is a concentrated product of cane juice without separation of the molasses and crystals, and can vary from golden brown to dark brown in color...

and other sweetmeats.