Kigelia

Kigelia
Kigelia africana: habit, fruit, flower, seeds.
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Eudicots
(unranked):	Asterids
Order:	Lamiales
Family:	Bignoniaceae
Tribe:	Coleeae
Genus:	Kigelia DC.
Binomial name
Kigelia africana (Lam.) Benth.

Kigelia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Bignoniaceae. The genus comprises only one species, Kigelia africana, which occurs throughout tropical Africa from Eritrea and Chad south to northern South Africa, and west to Senegal and Namibia. The Kigelia grows a fruit that grows up to 2 feet long, weighs about 15 lbs, and looks like sausage.

The genus name comes from the Mozambican Bantu name, kigeli-keia, while the common names sausage tree and cucumber tree refer to the long, sausage-like fruit. Its name in Afrikaans worsboom also means sausage tree, and its Arabic name means "the father of kit bags" (Roodt 1992).

It is a tree growing up to 20 m tall. The bark is grey and smooth at first, peeling on older trees. It can be as thick as 6 mm on a 15-cm branch (Roodt 1992). The wood is pale brown or yellowish, undifferentiated and not prone to cracking (Roodt 1992).

The tree is evergreen where rainfall occurs throughout the year, but deciduous where there is a long dry season. The leaves are opposite or in whorls of three, 30–50 cm long, pinnate, with six to ten oval leaflets up to 20 cm long and 6 cm broad; the terminal leaflet can be either present or absent. The flowers (and later the fruit) hang down from branches on long flexible stems (2-6 metres long). Flowers are produced in panicles; they are bell-shaped (similar to those of the African tulip tree but darker and more waxy), orange to reddish or purplish green, and about 10 cm wide. Individual flowers do not hang down but are oriented horizontally. Some birds are attracted to these flowers and the strong stems of each flower make ideal footholds. Their scent is most notable at night indicating that they are adapted to pollination by bats, which visit them for pollen and nectar. They also remain open by day however, and are freely visited by many insect pollinators, particularly large species such as carpenter bees.

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