Boscia albitrunca, commonly called Witgatboom, Matoppie, or Shepherd's Tree, grows up to 10 metres tall but usually much smaller. It is an evergreen

Evergreen

In botany, an evergreen plant is a plant that has leaves in all seasons. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which completely lose their foliage during the winter or dry season.There are many different kinds of evergreen plants, both trees and shrubs...

 tree native to Southern and Tropical Africa, living in the hot, dry, and often brackish low-lying areas, sometimes on abundant lime and occasionally found in rocky terrain. It is common tree of the Bushveld

Bushveld

The Bushveld is a sub-tropical woodland ecoregion of Southern Africa that encompasses most of Limpopo Province and a small part of the North West Province of South Africa, the Central and North-East Districts of Botswana and the Matabeleland South and part of th Matabeleland North provinces of...

 and Lowveld.

This tree has a prominent, sturdy white trunk frequently with strips of rough dark-coloured bark. The crown is often browsed by antelope

Antelope

Antelope is a term referring to many even-toed ungulate species indigenous to various regions in Africa and Eurasia. Antelopes comprise a miscellaneous group within the family Bovidae, encompassing those old-world species that are neither cattle, sheep, buffalo, bison, nor goats...

 and all grazers who can reach the foliage, resulting in a conspicuous flattened underside or browse-line. The leaves

Leaf

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....

 are narrow, oblanceolate and stiff with veins obscure except for the distinct midrib. The flower

Flower

A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs...

s are small, greenish-yellow, star-shaped and clustered. The fruit

Fruit

In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

s, on a jointed stalk, are about 10mm in diameter and are brittle-skinned with a whitish flesh and large endocarp.

Boscia belongs to the caper family Capparaceae

Capparaceae

Capparaceae , commonly known as the Caper family, is a family of plants in order Brassicales. As currently circumscribed, it contains 33 genera and about 700 species...

. Pickled capers are made from the unopened buds of European members of this family. Boscia albitrunca is closely related to Boscia foetida subsp. rehmanniana, which has much smaller leaves and vevet-textured fruits. The genus was named for Louis Bosc

Louis Augustin Guillaume Bosc

Louis Augustin Guillaume Bosc was a French botanist, invertebrate zoologist, and entomologist.-Biography:...

 (1759-1828), a French professor of agriculture who lived through the revolution. The species epithet "albitrunca" refers to the white trunk.

A specimen was found in the central Kalahari in 1974 that had root

Root

In vascular plants, the root is the organ of a plant that typically lies below the surface of the soil. This is not always the case, however, since a root can also be aerial or aerating . Furthermore, a stem normally occurring below ground is not exceptional either...

s extending to 68m deep, making it the plant with the deepest known roots.