Saal Seed

The sal tree  is a hardwood timber tree, up to 30-35 m tall. The crown is spreading and spherical. Leaves are 20 cm long, simple, shiny and glabrous, delicate green, broadly oval at the base. Fruits are 1-1.5 cm large and ovoid.

Sal seeds have various uses. They may be ground into a flour to make bread. The kernels contain 14-20% oil (“sal butter”) which is used for cooking, as a cocoa butter replacer for illumination, and for industrial purposes . The resulting sal seed cake is rich in starch (50%) and used in canning. The leaves and sal seed cake are also used as feedstuffs.