The useful trees of northern NigeriaLely, Hugh Vandervaes
Science
The useful trees of northern Nigeria
Lely, Hugh Vandervaes
Plants, Useful -- Nigeria, Northern; Trees -- Nigeria, Northern
=The Fruits= are 1½ inches long, slightly curved, pointed at both ends,
extremely hard, and covered with long silky straight hairs. In section
they are 5-lobed, occasionally more, and contain one long seed. They
may be seen for several months in the year, chiefly in the dry season,
and are very conspicuous with their silky hairs. They have often a
pronounced pink tint.
=Uses.=—The shrub is burnt round cattle, sheep and goat camps to keep
off the flies and as a remedy for colds in such herds.
The leaves, concocted with water, are a medicine for internal
complaints, a preventive of leprosy and, applied externally, a cure for
skin irritations. They are also drunk by women after child-birth. The
leaves are often added to food to prevent indigestion.
It is commonly cut for fencing farms against herds.
[Illustration]
=GYMNOSPORIA SENEGALENSIS= Loes.—_Kunkushewa, Namijin tsada, Mangaladi,
Bakororo_. CELASTRACEAE.
A shrub or small tree, occasionally as tall as 25 feet with a girth
of 2 feet, but more generally a shrub found in large numbers in open
secondary growth after cultivation. It does not grow in the far north
and requires well-watered and more loamy soils than are found above
13° N. Sometimes it exceeds 50 per cent. of the vegetation on old farm
lands, and such land being burnt every year the tree increases very
slowly in height and broadens into a compact shrub. The crenate-edged
leaves with bright red stalks, the small sharp thorns, small white
flowers and globular fruits are distinctive characters.
=The Bark= of old trees is dark or light grey and covered with very
small, close-fitting rectangular scales. That of the shrubs is
pale-grey, sometimes almost white, and smooth. The slash is crimson.
=The Thorns= are in the axils of the leaves and in their axils is a
bud. On the new shoots they are green with crimson bases, ¼-½ inch
long, very sharp and straight. On old wood and twigs they are brown and
very strong.
=The Wood= is whitish, hard, straight grained, sound and clean and
weighs 45 lbs. a cubic foot. The rings are visible as extremely fine
lines of alternate hard and soft tissue, the pores and rays both
invisible except under good magnification. Planes and saws well but
splits in seasoning.
=The Leaves= vary a great deal in size and shape, but the type is
obovate or spoon-shaped with a tapering base and a rounded, broad
tip, with or without a cleft of variable depth. Often the tip of the
leaf is very deeply cleft, the edge is finely crenate or serrate, the
surface smooth, the laterals hardly visible except when held up to the
light. The mid-rib is prominent beneath, the laterals waved, the stalk
crimson, the length up to 4 inches and breadth 2½ inches. The leaf
droops in the sun and becomes limp in texture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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