Sterculia africana (Lour.) Fiori
Triphaca africana Lour.
Eng.: African star chestnut, mopopaja tree, bastard baobab. Ara.: Barut.
Deciduous tree, up to 12 m in height, with wide and cylindrical trunk, covered by smooth bark, grey-silvery, which peels off irregularly into papery lamina in old age, revealing a purple-brown layer below. Branches erect that open up to form a rounded crown; branchlets pulverulent to tomentose. Leaves grouped at the end of the branches, 3-13 × 3-13 cm, from light to densely pubescent; heart-shaped, with pointed apex, entire to deeply divided into 3-5 pointed lobes. Petioles 3-10 cm long. Flowers unisexual; they develop early on trunk and branches (before the leaves develop), in heads of terminal panicles up to 9 cm. Calyx c. 6-12 mm long, fused up to halfway, with 4-5 lobes, greenish-yellowish and pubescent on the outside, reddish on the inside. Sepals fused. Petals absent. Stamens 10-30, fused by the filaments in a 3-4 mm staminal column. Fruit with 3-5 follicles 4-10 cm long, narrowly ellipsoid and acuminate (ending in a beak), with a dense green-greyish tomentum; open when mature. Seeds numerous, 0.8-1 × 0.6 cm, ellipsoid, smooth, grey-blackish, with a whitish aril at one end.
Flowering:
March to September.
Fruiting:
July to October.
Habitat:
Desert areas, where it proliferates on rocky slopes from sea level to about 1,000 m.
Distribution:
Tropical Africa. In North Africa in the SE of Egypt and Sudan.
Conservation status:
Fairly rare species, but widely distributed. Currently, in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species it is evaluated as Least Concern (LC) at a global level (Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) & IUCN SSC Global Tree Specialist Group. 2019). In the updated red list of Egypt (Shaltout & Bedair, 2023) it has been considered as Endangered (EN).
