Author:
Jan Scholten
Book:
Qjurious
Type:
Info
Chapter:
3-644.55.__
Albizia antunesiana
Clades: Fabaceae
Region: tropical Africa, Rwanda, Tanzania, Angola, southern DR Congo, Zambia, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, northern S. Africa.
Habitat: deciduous woodland, wooded grassland; elevations from 900 - 1,700 metres; sunny position, loamy soil.
Content: bark with tannins.
Use: medicines, food, wood, tannins; wood for heavy construction, joinery, furniture, boat building, plywood, drums, implements, woodcarving, cabinet work, interior trim and railway sleepers; wood for fuel; young leaves, cooked with groundnuts, soda, tomato, onion and oil and then eaten as a vegetable.
Botany
Flowering tree, deciduous tree with a flattened, umbrella-shaped crown; up to 20 metres tall; bole short and branchless for up to 5 metres but sometimes up to 12 metres; it can be straight or twisted, and is up to 75cm in diameter; nitrogen fixing; sawdust can cause irritation to the noses and throats of sawmill workers; heartwood varies from pale brown to purplish brown, sometimes darker striped; grain is irregularly interlocked, texture moderately coarse; wood is moderately heavy; it saws and works well, but blunts tools rather rapidly; wood durable, resistant to termites;