Kigelia
Encyclopedia
Kigelia is a genus of flowering plant
s 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 genus name comes from the Mozambican Bantu name, kigeli-keia, while the common name Sausage Tree refers 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).
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 flower
s (and later the fruit) hang down from branches on long flexible stems (2-6 metres long). Flowers are produced in panicle
s; 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 their reliance on pollination by bat
s, which visit them for pollen and nectar.
The fruit
is a woody berry
from 30–100 cm long and up to 18 cm broad; it weighs between 5–10 kg, and hang down on long, rope-like peduncles
. The fruit pulp is fibrous and pulpy, and contains numerous seed
s. It is eaten by several species of mammal
s, including Baboon
s, Bushpig
s, Savannah Elephants, Giraffe
s, Hippopotami
, monkey
s, and porcupines
. The seeds are dispersed in their dung. The seeds are also eaten by Brown Parrots and Brown-headed Parrot
s, and the foliage by elephants and Greater Kudu
(Joffe 2003; del Hoyo et al. 1997). Introduced specimens in Australian parks are very popular with cockatoo
s.
, snakebites, evil spirits, syphilis
, and even tornadoes (Watkins 1975). An alcoholic beverage similar to beer
is also made from it. The fresh fruit is poison
ous and strongly purgative; fruit are prepared for consumption by drying, roasting or fermentation (Joffe 2003; McBurney 2004). In Botswana the timber is used for makoro
s, yokes and oars (Roodt 1992). Kigelia is also used in a number of skin care products.
The tree is widely grown as an ornamental tree
in tropical regions for its decorative flowers and unusual fruit. Planting sites should be selected carefully, as the falling fruit can cause serious injury to people, and damage vehicles parked under the trees.
as distinct species, but botanical
studies agree that the genus contains only one species (Joffe 2003, GRIN).
Flowering plant
The flowering plants , also known as Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants. Angiosperms are seed-producing plants like the gymnosperms and can be distinguished from the gymnosperms by a series of synapomorphies...
s in the family Bignoniaceae
Bignoniaceae
The Bignoniaceae, or Trumpet Creeper Family, is a family of flowering plants comprising about 650-750 species in 116-120 genera. Members of the family are mostly trees and lianas , shrubs and more rarely herbaceous plants. As climber plants, they are twine climbers or tendril climbers, and rarely...
. The genus comprises only one species, Kigelia africana, which occurs throughout tropical Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
from Eritrea
Eritrea
Eritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea derives it's name from the Greek word Erethria, meaning 'red land'. The capital is Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast...
and Chad
Chad
Chad , officially known as the Republic of Chad, is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon and Nigeria to the southwest, and Niger to the west...
south to northern South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, and west to Senegal
Senegal
Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...
and Namibia
Namibia
Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March...
.
Etymology
Sausage
A sausage is a food usually made from ground meat , mixed with salt, herbs, and other spices, although vegetarian sausages are available. The word sausage is derived from Old French saussiche, from the Latin word salsus, meaning salted.Typically, a sausage is formed in a casing traditionally made...
-like fruit. Its name in Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...
Worsboom also means Sausage Tree, and its Arabic name means "the father of kit bags" (Roodt 1992).
Growth
It is a treeTree
A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...
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
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...
where rainfall occurs throughout the year, but deciduous
Deciduous
Deciduous means "falling off at maturity" or "tending to fall off", and is typically used in reference to trees or shrubs that lose their leaves seasonally, and to the shedding of other plant structures such as petals after flowering or fruit when ripe...
where there is a long dry season
Dry season
The dry season is a term commonly used when describing the weather in the tropics. The weather in the tropics is dominated by the tropical rain belt, which oscillates from the northern to the southern tropics over the course of the year...
. 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 opposite or in whorls of three, 30–50 cm long, pinnate
Pinnate
Pinnate is a term used to describe feather-like or multi-divided features arising from both sides of a common axis in plant or animal structures, and comes from the Latin word pinna meaning "feather", "wing", or "fin". A similar term is pectinate, which refers to a comb-like arrangement of parts...
, 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 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 (and later the fruit) hang down from branches on long flexible stems (2-6 metres long). Flowers are produced in panicle
Panicle
A panicle is a compound raceme, a loose, much-branched indeterminate inflorescence with pedicellate flowers attached along the secondary branches; in other words, a branched cluster of flowers in which the branches are racemes....
s; they are bell-shaped (similar to those of the African Tulip Tree
Spathodea
Spathodea is a monotypic genus in the flowering plant family Bignoniaceae. The single species it contains, Spathodea campanulata, is commonly known as the Fountain Tree, African Tulip Tree, Flame-of-the-forest, Rudra Palash, Pichkari or Nandi Flame. It is a tree that grows between tall and is...
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 their reliance on pollination by bat
Bat
Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera "hand" and pteron "wing") whose forelimbs form webbed wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums, and colugos, glide rather than fly,...
s, which visit them for pollen and nectar.
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,...
is a woody berry
Berry
The botanical definition of a berry is a fleshy fruit produced from a single ovary. Grapes are an example. The berry is the most common type of fleshy fruit in which the entire ovary wall ripens into an edible pericarp. They may have one or more carpels with a thin covering and fleshy interiors....
from 30–100 cm long and up to 18 cm broad; it weighs between 5–10 kg, and hang down on long, rope-like peduncles
Peduncle (botany)
In botany, a peduncle is a stem supporting an inflorescence, or after fecundation, an infructescence.The peduncle is a stem, usually green and without leaves, though sometimes colored or supporting small leaves...
. The fruit pulp is fibrous and pulpy, and contains numerous seed
Seed
A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...
s. It is eaten by several species of mammal
Mammal
Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...
s, including Baboon
Baboon
Baboons are African and Arabian Old World monkeys belonging to the genus Papio, part of the subfamily Cercopithecinae. There are five species, which are some of the largest non-hominoid members of the primate order; only the mandrill and the drill are larger...
s, Bushpig
Bushpig
The bushpig, Potamochoerus larvatus, is a member of the pig family and lives in forests, woodland, riverine vegetation and reedbeds in East and Southern Africa. Probably introduced populations are also present in Madagascar and the Comoros archipelago. Bushpigs are mainly nocturnal. There are...
s, Savannah Elephants, Giraffe
Giraffe
The giraffe is an African even-toed ungulate mammal, the tallest of all extant land-living animal species, and the largest ruminant...
s, Hippopotami
Hippopotamus
The hippopotamus , or hippo, from the ancient Greek for "river horse" , is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae After the elephant and rhinoceros, the hippopotamus is the third largest land mammal and the heaviest...
, monkey
Monkey
A monkey is a primate, either an Old World monkey or a New World monkey. There are about 260 known living species of monkey. Many are arboreal, although there are species that live primarily on the ground, such as baboons. Monkeys are generally considered to be intelligent. Unlike apes, monkeys...
s, and porcupines
Old World porcupine
The Old World porcupines, or Hystricidae, are large terrestrial rodents, distinguished by the spiny covering from which they take their name. They range over the south of Europe, most of Africa, India, and the Maritime Southeast Asia as far east as Borneo...
. The seeds are dispersed in their dung. The seeds are also eaten by Brown Parrots and Brown-headed Parrot
Brown-headed Parrot
The Brown-headed Parrot is a mostly green African parrot with a greyish-brown head and yellow under its wings. The adult birds have yellow irises and juvenile birds have brown irises....
s, and the foliage by elephants and Greater Kudu
Greater Kudu
The Greater Kudu is a woodland antelope found throughout eastern and southern Africa. Despite occupying such widespread territory, they are sparsely populated in most areas, due to a declining habitat, deforestation and hunting....
(Joffe 2003; del Hoyo et al. 1997). Introduced specimens in Australian parks are very popular with cockatoo
Cockatoo
A cockatoo is any of the 21 species belonging to the bird family Cacatuidae. Along with the Psittacidae and the Strigopidae , they make up the parrot order Psittaciformes . Placement of the cockatoos as a separate family is fairly undisputed, although many aspects of the other living lineages of...
s.
Cultivation and uses
In African herbal medicine, the fruit is believed to be a cure for a wide range of ailments, from rheumatismRheumatism
Rheumatism or rheumatic disorder is a non-specific term for medical problems affecting the joints and connective tissue. The study of, and therapeutic interventions in, such disorders is called rheumatology.-Terminology:...
, snakebites, evil spirits, syphilis
Syphilis
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...
, and even tornadoes (Watkins 1975). An alcoholic beverage similar to beer
Beer
Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...
is also made from it. The fresh fruit is poison
Poison
In the context of biology, poisons are substances that can cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism....
ous and strongly purgative; fruit are prepared for consumption by drying, roasting or fermentation (Joffe 2003; McBurney 2004). In Botswana the timber is used for makoro
Makoro
A makoro is a type of canoe commonly used in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. It is propelled through the shallow waters of the delta by standing in the stern and pushing with a pole, in the same manner as punting....
s, yokes and oars (Roodt 1992). Kigelia is also used in a number of skin care products.
The tree is widely grown as an ornamental tree
Ornamental plant
Ornamental plants are plants that are grown for decorative purposes in gardens and landscape design projects, as house plants, for cut flowers and specimen display...
in tropical regions for its decorative flowers and unusual fruit. Planting sites should be selected carefully, as the falling fruit can cause serious injury to people, and damage vehicles parked under the trees.
Synonymy
Some synonyms are still accepted by a few horticulturistsHorticulture
Horticulture is the industry and science of plant cultivation including the process of preparing soil for the planting of seeds, tubers, or cuttings. Horticulturists work and conduct research in the disciplines of plant propagation and cultivation, crop production, plant breeding and genetic...
as distinct species, but botanical
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
studies agree that the genus contains only one species (Joffe 2003, GRIN).
- Bignonia africana Lam. (basionymBasionymBasionym is a term used in botany, regulated by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature...
)- Tecoma africana (Lam.) G.Don
- Crescentia pinnata Jacq.
- Kigelia pinnata (Jacq.) DC.
- Kigelia abyssinica A.Rich.
- Kigelia aethiopica Decne.