Kigelia

Common card · No. 245071

Kigelia is a genus of flowering plants in the trumpet vine family Bignoniaceae. The genus consists of only one species, Kigelia africana, syn. Kigelia pinnata, which occurs throughout tropical Africa and is cultivated elsewhere in the tropics. Often called sausage tree, it grows a fruit that is up to 60 centimetres (24 in) long, weighs about 5–10 kilograms (11–22 lb), and resembles a sausage in a casing. The fruit and bark of the plant are used by African tribes as traditional medicine. The fruit is poisonous for humans when raw, but is also made into an alcoholic drink by tribes in Kenya. It is eaten by elephants, baboons, and other wild animals, which may disperse the seeds, but their importance for seed dispersal remains unverified. Bats pollinate the flowers by drinking their nectar. They can also be pollinated via airstreams, insects, and birds.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Photographs: Ettore Balocchi (upper left), Bjørn Christian Tørrissen (upper right), Marco Schmidt (bottom left), Genet (bottom right). Montage by RoRo, CC BY-SA 3.0