Parkia bicolor
A. Chev.
African locust bean
(c) Carel Jongkind, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Carel Jongkind
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Wikimedia Commons - Dorothy Amaury Talbot
What to Eat
Edible parts: Seeds, Fruit
The seeds are edible and widely used for thickening soups and making alcoholic drinks. Seeds are sold in local markets.
Where to Find It
A tropical plant. It grows in closed forest and seasonally deciduous forest in West Africa. It can grow in arid places.
Africa, Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Central Africa, Central African Republic, CAR, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinée, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Sahel, Sierra Leone, West Africa,
How to Identify
A tree. It grows 45 m high. The trunk is 90 cm across. It has buttresses. The crown is wide spreading and loses its leaves. The leaves are alternate and twice divided. There are 10-26 pairs of secondary leaflets. The fruit is a pod 15-40 cm long and 2-3 cm wide. They hang in groups at the ends of stalks. There are 20-30 seeds per pod. They are 1-1.5 cm long by 0.5-1 cm wide.
How to Grow
Plants are grown by seeds. It needs a sunny position.
Propagation: Seed - it loses its viability rapidly and should be sown fresh. Removal of the seed coat improves germination. Germination occurs 4 - 10 days after sowing. The seedlings are sensitive to damping off.
Medicinal Uses
The timber of Parkia bicolor is not highly esteemed but is used to make planks, and canoes and for light construction work, joinery and turnery. Additionally, it is used to make plywood and pulpwood. The flesh of the fruit can be eaten, and the seeds can be fermented to make a condiment. The bark, leaves and roots are all used in traditional medicine and the spreading crown makes this a useful shade tree. Parkia bicolor exudes a water-soluble, proteinaceous gum. After hydrolysis, this yields 74% galactose, 9% arabinose, 9.5% glucuronic acid and 7.5% 4-0-methylglucuronic acid.
Other Uses
The heartwood is pale yellow, sometimes with darker irregular streaks; it is indistinctly demarcated from the wide sapwood. The grain is variable, from straight to interlocked; texture coarse but even; fresh wood has an unpleasant odour. The wood is moderately light, soft and moderately tough; it is not durable and is liable to termite, pinhole borer and marine borer attacks. It saws moderately well and works satisfactorily with both hand and machine tool; it can be planed to a smooth and lustrous surface, but the wood is difficult to polish and varnish; the nailing and gluing properties are satisfactory. The wood yields about 57% sulphate pulp and is considered suitable for the paper industry. The wood is used for planks, carpentry and canoes. It is also suitable for light construction, interior trim, joinery, furniture, cabinet work, shipbuilding, toys, novelties, implements, turnery, boxes, crates, matches, veneer, plywood, hardboard, particle board and pulpwood. The tree with its open, widely spreading crown is used as a shade tree for crops, and it is sometimes retained when cutting the forest for agricultural land.
Wikipedia
Source ↗Parkia bicolor, the African locust-bean, is a species of flowering plant, a tree in the family Fabaceae. It is native to tropical West and Central Africa. Its natural habitats are tropical moist lowland forests, swampland, woodland and savannah.
Other Information
Seeds are sold in local markets.
Notes
There are about 30 Parkia species. They are tropical. Also as Mimosaceae.
Names & Synonyms
Asoma, Baa, Essang, Eseng, Ezieb, Kohan, Koin, Lo, Ndembe, Netto, Ugboro
References (17)
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