Xylopia aethiopica
Tall evergreen aromatic tree or shrub, 5.4–30(–45) m tall, with fairly smooth grey-brown bark, a much-branched crown and sometimes a buttressed bole; young branchlets puberulous at first, but soon glabrous, reddish-brown to blackish, smooth or rugose and mostly with many conspicuous lenticels. Leaf-blades oblong, elliptic, ovate or oblanceolate, (6–)8–16.4 cm long, 2.8–6.5 cm wide, obtuse, acute or prominently acuminate at the apex (the acumen attaining 2 cm.), cuneate to rounded and decurrent at the base, coriaceous, drying bluish-green above and greenish-brown to orange beneath, glabrous above, adpressed pubescent or glabrescent (silky pilose when very young) and usually ± glaucous beneath; venation laxly to densely reticulate, usually prominent on both surfaces but sometimes obscure above; petiole 3–6 mm long, blackish, adpressed pubescent or glabrescent. Flowers solitary or in 3–5-flowered fascicles, fragrant; pedicels 0.4–1.1 cm long, adpressed ferruginous pubescent; bracteoles 2–3, cucullate, 1–4 mm long, 2–2.5 mm wide, adpressed pubescent outside, glabrous inside. Sepals ovate-triangular, 3–5 mm long and wide, rounded to acute or apiculate, glabrescent to pubescent outside, glabrous inside. Petals cream, greenish-white or yellow; outer linear, 2.5–5.5 cm long, 2–3.5 mm wide above, 5–6 mm wide at the base, concave at the base, silky pubescent outside, tomentellous inside save at the base; inner rather shorter and narrower, 2.7–4.5 cm long, 1.5–2 mm wide, tomentellous save at the base. Stamens linear, 1–1.5 mm long; connective-prolongation obliquely capitate, papillose or pubescent. Carpels 24–32(–42); ovary cylindric, 1–1.5 mm long, sparsely adpressed pilose, 6–8-ovuled; styles linear-tapering, aggregated to form a very narrow cone ± 3–4.5 mm long. Fruiting pedicels 0.7–1.2(–2.2) cm long; monocarps (5–) 16–24(–42), green to reddish, cylindrical, 1.5–6 cm long, 5–7 mm wide, straight, obtuse, 1–8-seeded, not or scarcely constricted between the seeds, glabrous, ± smooth but usually diagonally ridged, subsessile. Seeds orange-red to black, cylindrical, vertical, 5–7 mm long, 2–4 mm wide and thick; aril papery, yellow, 2–3 mm long.
Common
Widespread in Africa, from Senegal to the Sudan and S. to Angola, Congo, Zambia and Mozambique
Fruits used as spice, sheets of bark used for construction, fruits and bark used medicinally, wood used locally for planks and poles. Called ukam (Durop), bokei (Oroko)