Kalantas
Toona ciliata · Red cedar
- Names in the book
- Kalantas, Tag., Pam.; Lanigpa, Vis.
- Used for
- Diarrhea and dysentery
- Colours
- flowerwhite
- Native range
- South Asia to Australia
- In the Philippines, per the book
- Very common in the islands.
- Family
- Meliaceae, filed in the book under Meliaceæ
- Printed as
- Cedrela Toona, Roxb. (C. odorata, Blanco.)
- Sources
- Page 79 on Project Gutenberg · Wikipedia
The Philippine kalantas is now treated as its own species, Toona calantas.
The plant today
Toona ciliata is a forest tree in the mahogany family which grows throughout South Asia from Afghanistan to Papua New Guinea and Australia.
Excerpt from “Toona ciliata” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Recorded in the Philippines
GBIF holds 19 records of this plant from the Philippines. The ones with map coordinates fall in 2 provinces: Cagayan (1), Misamis Occidental (1).
Counts from GBIF occurrence records, October 2026. They include planted trees and garden plants, and a province with no records may only lack collectors.
What the 1901 book says
A historical record, quoted as printed. Doses and remedies here are not medical advice.
Uses
The infusion of the flowers is antispasmodic. The trunk bark is an excellent astringent, and Dr. Waitz recommends it in extract as a treatment for infantile diarrhœa, for which I also have found it very useful. Blume says that it contains marked antispasmodic virtues, and Dr. G. Kennedy confirms it. Other physicians of India, among them Ros and Newton, have recommended the bark as a substitute for cinchona, given dry in doses of 30 grams.
Infusion.—
[table omitted; see the source text]
Dose
Several dessert-spoonfuls a day.
The powdered bark is very useful as an application to indolent ulcers which it instantly deodorizes; like powdered quinine it is used in the treatment of superficial gangrene.
Botanical description
A large tree. Leaves odd-pinnate. Leaflets oval, lanceolate, acuminate, entire, glabrous, 5–6 pairs. Flowers yellow, in terminal panicles. Calyx 5-toothed. Corolla, 5 oblong petals. Stamens 5, free, inserted on the apex of a disk. Ovaries sessile, 5 many-ovuled cells. Style short. Stigma on a disk. Seed vessel coriaceous, 5 compartments, septicidal, 5-valved. Seeds compressed, pendulous, prolonged in a membranous wing.
Recent research
The most cited papers since 2022 that name this plant in the title, pulled from Europe PMC in October 2026. Titles are the authors' own and the findings have not been reviewed here.
- Phylogeography of Toona ciliata (Meliaceae) Complex in China Inferred from Cytonuclear Markers
- Sequencing and analysis of the complete mitochondrial genomes of Toona sinensis and Toona ciliata reveal evolutionary features of Toona
- Evolutionary Divergence between Toona ciliata and Toona sinensis Assayed with Their Whole Genome Sequences