THE NIGERIAN TIMBER TREES 377 



one of the giant forest trees, attaining a girth of over 30 feet 

 and a height of over 200 feet ; its bole is one of the 

 straightest of African trees, the trunk often reaching over 

 100 feet without a branch. The crown is flattish and almost 

 symmetrical in its roundness ; it is formed with three or four 

 main limbs spreading out at almost right angles to the trunk. 

 The foliage is heavy and the sword-shaped leaves almost appear 

 as though they were digitate, looking at them from the base 

 of the tree. From a short distance the trunk looks almost 

 black, but on closer inspection the bark is seen to be deeply 

 fissured in a comparatively even lattice-work fashion. The slash 

 is white and a thick white latex exudes. The root spurns are 

 only slight, except in old age ; otherwise the bole is one of the 

 most cylindrical of African trees. (In illustration No. 100 a tree of 

 about 8 feet in girth shows the very straight and even thickness 

 of the bole.) The fruit falls to the ground about the beginning 

 of November, and crushes on contact with the ground, showing 

 the yellow floury pulp inside. The pulp has an extremely 

 dry, sweet, almost nauseating taste and is inclined to stick 

 in the throat. This huge fruit, the size of a man's fist, is almost 

 like a huge plum, with rough opaque surface and almost spherical 

 in shape ; inside, embedded in the pulp, are two, three or four 

 lobed nuts, smooth and shiny on the more rounded face 

 and rough on the other ; in some respects they are roughly 

 kidney-shaped when looked at sideways. The flowers are 

 white and small ; the tree loses its leaves for three or four days, 

 when fresh ones come out again. 



The sapwood is white and the heartwood of a rich red 

 colour, often showing figured rosy grain ; it is very hard, heavy 

 and very durable, and is sometimes cross-grained, though 

 usually the texture is fine and planes up with a smooth surface ; 

 it saws well, but is too hard to take nails, except in very thin 

 wood. The sapwood is usually only two or three inches wide ; 

 the heartwood forms comparatively early in the life of the 

 tree. On the whole, this tree has a more open grain than the 

 other Mimusops. 



Although the tree can stand a little shade in its youth, it 

 is really a light-loving species : after the first year the height- 

 growth rapidly increases when trees standing in a plantation 

 have plenty of light. In illustration No. 93 some trees only twelve 

 years old show how rapidly they develop under suitable con- 

 ditions. None of these trees have yet come into the nut-bearing 

 stage, but it appears that in favourable localities the trees will 

 bear fruit between the fifteenth and twentieth year. 



It is a soil protecting and improving tree — in fact, the thick 



