Pistacia aethiopica is an african and Arabia coast peninsula species of plant

Plant

Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. Precise definitions of the kingdom vary, but as the term is used here, plants include familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The group is also called green plants or...

 in the Anacardiaceae

Anacardiaceae

Anacardiaceae are a family of flowering plants bearing fruits that are drupes and in some cases producing urushiol, an irritant. Anacardiaceae include numerous genera with several of economic importance. Notable plants in this family include cashew , mango, poison ivy, sumac, smoke tree, and marula...

 family. It is a dioecious

Dioecious

Dioecy is the property of a group of biological organisms that have males and females, but not members that have organs of both sexes at the same time. I.e., those whose individual members can usually produce only one type of gamete; each individual organism is thus distinctly female or male...

 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...

 shrub

Shrub

A shrub or bush is distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and shorter height, usually under 5–6 m tall. A large number of plants may become either shrubs or trees, depending on the growing conditions they experience...

 or tree

Tree

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...

 of the Pistacio

Pistacia

Pistacia is a genus of flowering plants in the cashew family, Anacardiaceae. It contains ten to twenty species that are native to Africa and Eurasia from the Canary Islands, whole Africa, and southern Europe, warm and semi-desert areas across Asia, and also North America from Mexico to warm and...

 genus growing up to 20 m (65.6 ft) tall adapted to the dry environment. It is found in Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

, Kenya

Kenya

Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

, Somalia

Somalia

Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...

, Tanzania

Tanzania

The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...

, Uganda

Uganda

Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...

, and Yemen

Yemen

The Republic of Yemen , commonly known as Yemen , is a country located in the Middle East, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east....

.

description

It is an evergreen slow growth tree that emit a very intense smell bitter, resinous or to medication. The tree reach 5-15 (top 20) m tall, rarely a shrub, often with multiple stems, the trunk of 0.6 m in diameter, bark color brown-black, fissured. It have glabrous leathery leaves, with a thick cuticle. the leaves are aromatic, 4-16-18 foliolate, glossy bright green. the leaves with rachis 10 cm long.
The tree is dioecious

Dioecious

Dioecy is the property of a group of biological organisms that have males and females, but not members that have organs of both sexes at the same time. I.e., those whose individual members can usually produce only one type of gamete; each individual organism is thus distinctly female or male...

with male and female trees producing different sex flowers. Both types of flower are small and greenish. It grow slowly reaching 1000 years old.

Ecology

It is found in dry evergreen forest (often with Juniperus and Olea - Euclea) and associated shrubs or wooded grassland, thickets of Buxus, deciduous with Combretum, Acacia and Barkey in soils of limestone, sandstone or basalt, to an altitude of 900-2550 meters. Pistacia aethiopica have many adaptations to aridity, such as an advanced development of palisade tissue and extensive root growth. These adaptive traits allow species to grow in very harsh and dry areas with low rainfall. In the main part of its range in North and East Africa, the species is fairly common because is used for a variety of purposes, including timber, dye, fodder, agriculture and livestock food. There is an outlying subpopulation in Arabia, restricted to Jebel Iraf on the old North Yemen-South Yemen border. The species is thought to be extinct in Eritrea.

Source

• World Conservation Monitoring Centre 1998. Pistacia aethiopica. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Downloaded on 23 August 2007.