Diospyros mespiliformis
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Diospyros mespiliformis |
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| Diospyros mespiliformis | ||||||||||||
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Diospyros mespiliformis is a species of the ebony family(Ebenaceae). The wood is traded under the name "African ebony".
description
Vegetative characteristics
In Diospyros mespiliformis is an evergreen tree of stature heights of 25 meters or more reached; It rarely grows as a shrub with heights of up to 3 meters. It forms a spread out, round treetop . The bark is dark brown to black. The bark of young twigs is hairy, woolly pink. The alternate leaves are simple. The elliptical leaf blade is 6 × 2.2 to 14 × 4.5 centimeters with a distinct midrib and 15 to 20 pairs of lateral nerves branching off at 45 °. The underside of the leaf is hairy.
Generative characteristics
Diospyros mespiliformis is dioecious separately sexed ( diocesan ). The unisexual flowers are four to five-fold. The four to five sepals are fused, with triangular 0.15 centimeter long calyx tips. The four to five white petals with woolly hair on the outside are fused into a 0.5 centimeter long corolla tube that ends in 0.1 centimeter long corolla lobes. The male flowers sit in threes at the ends of only 0.4 to 0.6 cm long inflorescence shafts in the leaf axils of reduced leaves or normal leaves on annual twigs. In the male flowers there are about 14, 0.4 cm long, stamens that do not protrude over the petals with 0.1 cm long stamens and there are tiny, woolly hairy rudimentary pistils. The somewhat larger, female flowers are usually solitary, rarely in pairs or threes in the axils of reduced leaves at the base of annual twigs. The female flowers have six to twelve 0.4 cm long staminodes . The ovary has a diameter of 0.3 centimeters with four or six ovary chambers. The scar sits right on the ovary.
The warty, yellowish berry when ripe is about 2.5 centimeters in diameter, rounded at the top and still surrounded by the curved, strongly corrugated sepals at the base. The fruit contains three to six reddish-brown seeds.
distribution
It occurs in savannah areas in tropical and southern Africa , often on termite mounds , in semi-evergreen dry forests, in gallery forests or in sandstone formations .
use
The hard, fungus and termite-resistant wood is sold under the name "African ebony". But it is also used as firewood or to produce charcoal.
The fruits known as "jackal berry" in southern Africa are eaten or processed into alcoholic beverages.
swell
- F. White: Ebenaceae in Flora Zambesiaca, Volume 7, 1983: Diospyros mespiliformis - Online.
