Bureaucrat, administrator, widgeteditor
146,870
edits
Changes
no edit summary
:Chromosome number: 2''n'' = 42
== Vernacular names ==
The wood of ''Cola laurifolia'' is yellow-grey. The texture is fine. The wood is strong and elastic, bending without breaking, but sometimes splitting.
== Botany Description ==
Medium-sized tree up to 30 m tall, often low-branching with arching, sometimes rooting branches; bole up to 80 cm in diameter; young parts rusty stellate-hairy. Leaves alternate, grouped at the end of twigs, simple and entire; petiole 2–8 cm long; blade oblong, elliptical or oblanceolate, 5–25 cm × 2.5–13 cm, cuneate at base, apex obtuse or broadly acuminate, leathery, covered with reddish stellate hairs when young, but becoming glabrous later. Inflorescence a short axillary cyme, densely reddish hairy. Flowers unisexual, regular, yellow or brownish; calyx 4–6 mm long, with very short tube, 5-lobed with lanceolate lobes, rusty brown hairy outside, margins fringed; corolla absent; male flowers with anthers on androphore in 1 row; female flowers with pedicel up to 1.5 cm long, ovary superior, consisting of 4–6 carpels. Fruit consisting of 4–5 follicles on short pedicel; follicles obovoid, up to 5 cm long, brown or red, wrinkled, reddish pubescent, 4–5-seeded. Seeds c. 2 cm × 1.5 cm × 1 cm, completely covered by a yellow aril.
In Côte d’Ivoire ''Cola laurifolia'' flowers from August to March; fruiting is from June to February. ''Cola'' comprises about 100 species and is restricted to continental Africa.
=== ''Cola buntingii'' ===
Also present in West Africa is ''[[Cola buntingii]]'' Baker f. (bush kola), a tree up to 12 m tall, occurring in the understorey of evergreen forest from Liberia to Ghana. Its heartwood is orange-brown; the wood is rather hard (Janka side hardness 9490 N at 12% moisture content) and heavy (density 830 kg/m³ at 12% moisture content). In Liberia the stems are used for native house construction and as pestles; the fruit pulp is edible.
== Ecology ==
[[fr:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:PROTA prov]][[Catégorie:Bois d'œuvre (PROTA)]]
