Zebrawood

Brachystegia spiciformis, commonly called msasa or zebrawood, is a medium-sized deciduous tree in the Fabaceae family that dominates miombo woodland across south-central and southeastern Africa, with its range covering Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Mature trees typically reach 14 to 18 metres in height with a spreading flat-topped crown and a relatively short, often crooked bole bearing rough, fissured grey to brown bark. The pinnate leaves have three to five pairs of asymmetric, oblong-elliptic leaflets, the terminal pair largest; new foliage flushes spectacularly in late August through October in shades of crimson, copper, bronze and purple before maturing to deep glossy green. Small, fragrant, greenish to yellowish flowers lacking conspicuous petals are borne in dense terminal and axillary racemes. The fruit is a flattened, woody, oblong pod 12 to 15 centimetres long that dehisces explosively along both sutures, twisting and ejecting four to six discoid, flat brown seeds about 2 centimetres across. The tree is a key miombo dominant and harbours edible caterpillars and ectomycorrhizal fungi.