Curry tree
Subtropical tree with leaves used culinarily
Bergera koenigii, synonym Murraya koenigii, and commonly known as curry tree, curry bush or sweet neem, is a tree in the citrus family Rutaceae, first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1767. It is native to the Indian subcontinent, southern China and mainland Southeast Asia, and it has been introduced to other parts of Southeast Asia and to Australia. Its leaves are used in many culinary dishes in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Description
It is a small to medium-sized tropical tree, typically growing 4–6 metres (13–20 ft) tall but capable of reaching up to 8–10 metres (26–33 ft) under favourable conditions, with a trunk up to 40 cm (16 in) in diameter. The aromatic leaves are pinnate, with 11–21 leaflets, each leaflet 2–4 cm (3⁄4–1+1⁄2 in) long and 1–2 cm (1⁄2–3⁄4 in) broad. The plant produces small white flowers which can self-pollinate to produce small shiny-black drupes containing a single, large viable seed. The berry pulp is edible, with a sweet flavor.
Distribution and habitat
The tree is native to the following areas:
Indian subcontinent: Assam, Bangladesh, East Himalaya, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and West Himalaya
China: China South-Central, China Southeast, Hainan
Indo-China: Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam
It has been introduced to the Andaman Islands, Christmas Island, Fiji, Java, the Laccadive Islands, the Maldives, the Nicobar Islands and Sumatra. It has also been introduced to Queensland, Australia, where it is classed as an environmental weed.
Commercial plantations have been established in India, Australia and Costa del Sol in Spain.
“Curry tree” enters the record as subtropical tree with leaves used culinarily. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Curry, tree and Subtropical can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Curry tree” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Curry, tree and Subtropical provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q244731. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1767.
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This entry incorporates text from “Curry tree” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.