Balsam tree

Colophospermum mopane, the mopane, is a medium-sized deciduous tree in the family Fabaceae (subfamily Detarioideae) varying from a 4 to 8 metre shrubby form on poor soils to a 15 to 25 metre tree with a straight trunk on deeper alluvial sites; the bark is greyish-brown and longitudinally fissured. The alternate leaves are highly distinctive: each consists of two large, asymmetric, butterfly-wing-shaped leaflets 4 to 9 centimetres long joined at a short common petiole, with a tiny needle-like rudiment between them; the leaflets fold together at midday to reduce transpiration and turn brilliant yellow, orange and red in late autumn. The small, inconspicuous, apetalous yellowish-green flowers are borne in short axillary racemes early in the wet season. The fruit is a flat, kidney-shaped, leathery, indehiscent pod 2 to 5 centimetres long containing a single resinous, strongly turpentine-scented seed. Mopane forms extensive single-species woodlands and shrub-mopaneveld on hot, low-altitude clay and brackish soils across south-central Africa from Angola and Zambia to Mozambique and South Africa.