The generic epithet Antiaris is derived directly from the Javanese name for it: ancar[5] (obsolete Dutch-era spelling: antjar).

The Chinese of Hainan Island, refer to the tree as the "Poison Arrow Tree" (Chinese: 箭毒木; pinyin: Jiàndú Mù — "Arrow Poison Wood,") because its latex was smeared on arrowheads in ancient times by the Li people for use in hunting and warfare.

It is a large tree, growing to 25–40 m tall, with a trunk up to 40 cm diameter, often buttressed at the base, with pale grey bark.

[14] Antiaris toxicaria is a fairly small-scale source of timber and yields a lightweight hardwood with density of 250–540 kilogram per cubic metre (similar to balsa).

The seed from the fruit, which is a soft and edible[15] red or purple drupe 2 cm in diameter, is dispersed by birds, bats, possums, monkeys, deer, antelopes and humans.

It often is applied as mulch or green manure in local gardens, which however, must be grown beyond the shade of the extremely dense canopy of the tree.

[18][needs update] The latex of Antiaris toxicaria contains intensely toxic cardenolides, in particular a cardiac glycoside named antiarin.

In various ethnic groups of the Philippines, Borneo, Sulawesi and Malaysia the concentrated sap of Antiaris toxicaria is known as upas, apo, or ipoh, among other names.

[20][21] In Javanese tradition in Indonesia, Antiaris toxicaria (also known as upas) is mixed with Strychnos ignatii for arrow poison.

[22] Another account (professedly by one Foersch, who was a surgeon at Semarang in 1773) was published in The London Magazine, December 1783, and popularized by Erasmus Darwin in Loves of the Plants (Botanic Garden, pt.

[24] In fact, the deaths were due to an adjoining extinct volcano near Batar, called Guava Upas.

[28] One of the heroes of Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain written in 1924 mentioned this tree in the context "The knowledge of drugs possessed by the coloured races was far superior to our own.

In certain islands east of Dutch New Guinea, youths and maidens prepared a love charm from the bark of a tree—it was probably poisonous, like the hippomane manzanilla, or the antiaris toxicaria the deadly upas tree of Java, which could poison the air round with its steam and fatally stupefy man and beast".