Crossopteryx febrifuga

Crossopteryx febrifuga, sometimes called the African ordeal bark or in French 'arbre à grenailles', is a small to medium-sized deciduous tree of the family Rubiaceae, the only species in the genus Crossopteryx, widely distributed across the savannas and dry woodlands of tropical Africa from Senegal east to Sudan and Ethiopia and south to Angola, Zambia and Mozambique. It typically attains 6 to 15 metres in height with a short, often crooked trunk to 30 centimetres in diameter and a rounded open crown, the bark grey to greyish-brown, longitudinally fissured and scaly. The opposite, shortly petiolate leaves are ovate to elliptic, 5 to 12 centimetres long, leathery, dark green and somewhat shiny above, paler and finely pubescent beneath, with interpetiolar stipules. Small fragrant white to pale pink funnel-shaped five-lobed flowers about 8 to 12 millimetres long are massed in dense terminal corymbose panicles at the start of the rains. The fruit is a small hard globose woody capsule about 7 to 10 millimetres in diameter, containing many minute winged seeds.