Glue Berry

Gondi (Cordia dichotoma), gondi in Urdu and English glue berry or Indian cherry, is a small deciduous tree of the Boraginaceae grown for its sticky edible fruit, its fodder leaves and its useful wood. The honest reason a Pakistani grower plants it is that it is a genuine multipurpose tree for hard, dry ground, giving a pickling fruit, livestock browse and fuel where fussier species fail.

Where it thrives

The native range of the species runs from the Indian subcontinent across to the southwest Pacific and explicitly includes Pakistan and the West Himalaya, where it grows as a shrub or small tree of the seasonally dry tropical biome.¹ That makes the Punjab plains, the Sindh coast and the Pothohar plateau all suitable. It copes with a long dry season, takes a range of soils including poor and somewhat alkaline ground, stands heat well and tolerates the mild frost of the inland plateau, asking mainly for decent drainage.

Role in the system

Lead it in as a secondary-succession tree: it follows the early pioneers and holds a dense mid-canopy beneath the taller climax species. It is not a nitrogen fixer, so its value in the guild is its dense crown, its leaf litter and its multiple yields rather than soil nitrogen. It coppices and pollards, which makes it a working fodder tree: the leaves are recognised browse running roughly 12 to 15 percent crude protein, so it gives both a cut-and-carry feed and a steady drop of mulch as you cut it back.² The ripe fruit is an edible drupe with sweet, mucilaginous pulp, eaten ripe and used unripe as a pickled vegetable, and the same sticky pulp has long served as a glue.² In a guild it occupies the secondary fodder-and-fruit stratum, casting partial shade over the layers below while the fruiting window feeds people and pollinators.

Growing it

Raise it from seed, which is the usual route, and plant it where it can form a second canopy layer with room for its spreading crown. Once established it needs little water, tolerating drought and poor soil, though irrigation while young speeds it along. The decisions that matter: site it on free-draining ground, decide early whether you are running it as a fodder coppice or a standard fruit tree because that sets your spacing and pruning, and protect young seedlings from browsing until they are tall enough to take it. Prune to shape the crown and to harvest both fodder and an easy fruiting frame.

What you get

You get a sticky-sweet edible fruit used fresh and as pickle, protein-rich browse for cattle and goats, fuelwood and small timber, and a medicinal leaf, bark and fruit with documented antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory and wound-healing activity in review work.³ Be honest about the caveats: the fruit is small and seedy with a thin pulp, the medicinal claims are largely preclinical, and the seeds contain pyrrolizidine alkaloids, so the kernels are not a casual food. At normal culinary use of the ripe pulp there is no significant concern, and the tree is not invasive in Pakistani conditions.

Sourcing notes

Start from seed collected off a heavy-fruiting, healthy parent if eating and pickling quality matters, since fruit load and pulp vary between trees; locally adapted material from dry regions will track your conditions best. Pair it with nitrogen-fixing pioneers that genuinely fix to feed the young system, and with shade-tolerant herbs and groundcovers under its dense crown.

Sources

1. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (2024). “Cordia dichotoma G.Forst.” Plants of the World Online.
2. Jamkhande, P. G., Barde, S. R., Patwekar, S. L., Tidke, P. S. (2013). “Plant profile, phytochemistry and pharmacology of Cordia dichotoma (Indian cherry): A review.” Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Biomedicine.
3. Tripathi, R. K. P. (2023). “Current Trends and Future Prospects on the Therapeutic Potential of Cordia dichotoma G. Forst.” Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry.