Litsea glutinosa (Indian laurel).

Abstract Litsea glutinosa belongs to the family Lauraceae. It is a small- to medium-sized tree, 3-20 m tall, semi-evergreen, and fast-growing dioecious (Chowdhury et al., 2008; Ramana and Raju, 2019). It is native to India, South China to Malaysia, Australia and the western Pacific islands, and introduced and established in South Africa, the western Indian Ocean, and the south-western Pacific (New Caledonia), Mauritius and other tropical regions (Dassanayake, 1995). It has been introduced as a crop (Vos, 2004) and as an ornamental in tropical countries (EPPO, 2019). It has escaped from cultivation and is naturalized in some of the introduced areas. L. glutinosa has many uses in its area of origin as well as in some of its areas of introduction (ISSG, 2015). It is used principally as a binder for tablet formulations, and in the incense stick industry (Ramana and Raju, 2017).L. glutinosa is considered invasive in South Africa, where it is declared an invader plant (Henderson, 2001) and in the Indian Ocean (MacDonald et al., 1991; ISSG, 2015; PIER, 2019) on the islands of Mauritius (Mauritius Island and Rodrigues Island) (PIER, 2019) and Mayotte (Vos, 2004; ISSG, 2015; PIER, 2019). Jacq et al. (2005) do not consider L. glutinosa to be invasive globally, and ISSG (2015) considers it a small tree with high invasion potential, displacing native plant species in disturbed environments, although there is no evidence yet of its impact. It is classified by the IUCN (2019) as a species of Least Concern.