Jatropha moluccana L.[4] Aleurites moluccanus, the candlenut, is a flowering tree in the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae.

The leaves are pale green, simple, and ovate or heart-shaped on mature shoots, but may be three-, five-, or seven-lobed on saplings.

[5] Its native range is impossible to establish precisely because of early spread by humans, and the tree is now distributed throughout the New and Old World tropics.

Remains of harvested candlenuts have been recovered from archaeological sites in Timor and Morotai in eastern Indonesia, dated to around 13,000 and 11,000 BP, respectively.

[11] Archaeological evidence of candlenut cultivation is also found in Neolithic sites of the Toalean culture in southern Sulawesi dated to around 3,700 to 2,300 BP.

[6] The larvae of the coleopteran Agrianome fairmairei feed on dead candlenut wood,[17] and are considered a delicacy in New Caledonia.

[citation needed] In the Philippines, the fruit and tree are traditionally known as lumbang,[24] after which Lumban, a lakeshore town in Laguna province, is named.

Before the intrusion of non-native species, it was frequently used as a property-line manager, because its silvery underleaf makes the tree easy to distinguish from a distance.

[25] In the state of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, the Dusun tribes call the fruit godou and use it in tattoo-making as an optional ingredient for the ink.

The nuts were strung in a row on a palm leaf midrib, lit on one end, and burned one by one every fifteen minutes or so.

[28] Hawaiians had many other uses for the tree, including leis from the shells, leaves, and flowers; ink for tattoos from charred nuts; a varnish with the oil; and fishermen would chew the nuts and spit them on the water to break the surface tension and remove reflections, giving them greater underwater visibility.

[30] As recently as 1993 on the outlying islands of the kingdom of Tonga, candlenuts were chewed into sweet-scented emollient used during a traditional funerary ritual.

Modern cognates including Fijian, Tongan, Rarotongan, and Niue tui-tui; and Hawaiian kui-kui or kukui.

[39] The Malay language in both[clarification needed] has another name given to the nut which is buah keras (literally "hard fruit").