Kingdom Plantae Family Anacardiaceae Scientific name Pistacia aethiopica Rank Species | Order Sapindales Genus Pistacia Higher classification Pistacia | |
Similar Pistacia, Anacardiaceae, Sapindales, Pistacia integerrima, Magnoliopsida | ||
Pistacia aethiopica is an African and Arabia coast peninsula species of plant in the Anacardiaceae family. It is a dioecious evergreen shrub or tree of the pistacio genus, growing up to 20 m (66 ft) tall, adapted to the dry environment. It is found in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Yemen.
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Description
It is an evergreen slow-growing tree that emits a very intense smell: bitter, resinous or similar to medication. The tree reaches 5-15 m tall, and rarely is a shrub, often with multiple stems, the trunk of 0.6 m in diameter, and its bark color is brown-black and fissured. It has glabrous leathery leaves, with a thick cuticle. The leaves are aromatic, 4-16-18 foliolate, and glossy bright green. The leaves have rachis 10 cm long. The tree is dioecious, with male and female trees producing different sex flowers. Both types of flowers are small and greenish. It grows slowly, becoming 1000 years old.
Ecology
It is found in dry evergreen forest (often with Juniperus and Olea - Euclea) and associated shrubs or wooded grassland, thickets of Buxus, deciduous with Combretum, Acacia and Barkey in soils of limestone, sandstone, or basalt, to an altitude of 900–2550 m. P. aethiopica have many adaptations to aridity, such as an advanced development of palisade tissue and extensive root growth. These adaptive traits allow species to grow in very harsh and dry areas with low rainfall. In the main part of its range in North and East Africa, the species is fairly common because is used for a variety of purposes, including timber, dye, fodder, agriculture and livestock food. An outlying subpopulation in Arabia is restricted to Jebel Iraf on the old North Yemen-South Yemen border. The species is thought to be extinct in Eritrea.