My Beloved Great Fig!

This big fig tree supriced us this year. It gave thousands of fruit, but the fruiting season was very short, only two weeks or so from when they started to ripen. Then all of them had fallen on the gound, or eaten by birds.

The tree gave us the most fabulous opportunities to bird watching. The most beautiful Gambian birds visited it, eating figs. Next year I will take a good camera with me, and hope the spectacle will appear again.

I collected figs (with my sister Pirkko who is in the pictures), but they were not particularly tasty. I  cooked jam with sugar, and it was better.

Half of the ripe fruit were full of insects so I had to throw them away. Close up of the funny long tailed flies (or ants, or something in between ;-)) comes first! I laughed... it was like cleaning mushrooms, sometimes half of them are full of insects as well. Even the texture of the fruit flesh reminded me of familiar Swedish mushrooms (Boletus Edulis).

Piliostigma thonningii (most likely), a Bauhinia lookalike

 Updated Tuesday, June 21st

Barry helped me with the identification. This is really not a Bauhinia at all, but a relative, which seems to have small white flowers, not the orchid-like, colourful ones that most Bauhinias have. This was a slight disappointment; I don't have an orchid tree.
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I never saw this beautiful individual of Bauhinia in bloom, so I don't know which colour the flowers are. This is a very common tree in our area, we have tens of them growing wild on our plot.

 I asked one "neighbour" 3 kms away who also has many of them. He said the flowers are not particularly beautiful, something yellowish-brown, he said. Probably in the wild in Gambia there is only one species of the tree, so it might be the same as I have.

Long seed pods (Bignoniaceae)

Updated Tuesday 21st June.
The identification Bignoniaceae comes from Barry Stock.
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This grows by the way to the beach, very near our house, in a wild forest. Common-looking leaves, bushy way of growth, very long seed pods - 60-70 cm. They were all unripe January-March, so no seeds collected. No flowers either at that time.

Noni - Morinda citrifolia

Updated Tuesday, June 21st
I did not know this tree. Barry Stock helped me with th identification. Thank you! It is the famous Noni from the South Pacific, especially Tahiti. The juice from the fruit is sold as miraculous vitamine drink - very expensive!!
http://www.tahitinonijuice.info/
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This one grows on our plot. Only one of them. The branches are slender and long, hanging down slightly.

What can it be. Most of the local people we know did not have any name for it.  One man remembered a local name, but I lost it. He said it has cultural use; The branches are cut and used to symbolically "chase" groups of boys when they are on their way to circumsicion. He said the fruit will get yellow when ripe. They are not eaten in Gambia.

The tree had many unripe fruits, flowers and flower buds at the same time. The fruit apparently needs long time to ripen. I saw no change of colour in three months.

Terminalia macroptera - a common tree in our area

Updated Tuesday 21st June: Identified!!! Terminalia macroptera. Thanks, Barry!
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Barry is getting seeds from this one, labelled "The most common tree in our area". No ID. The pictures are limited, no whole tree. I will search in my messy folders if I find some more to add to this one, from previous years.

The stem in the second picture is covered with termite "shelter" so it's for no use.

A thorny one - Zanthoxylum zanthoxyloides

Updated Tuesday 21st June: Identified by Barry S: Zanthoxylum zanthoxyloides.

This is an endangered species. The roots are very much wanted for medicinal uses, and people don't bother to plant new trees when they destroy old ones. Very sad. I know one Dutch person in Gambia who has a big one in his garden. He allows the "medicine man" dig out ONE root every year from his tree, not more than that.  The individual I have pictured, is inside a compound with high concrete fences so it will be safe.
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I wonder if this is the same as Barry had found on the net googling West African trees end of 2010. It is a smallish tree with many stems, bush-like. 

Unfortunately I never went there again, so I have no picture of open flowers or any fruit. No seeds to pick. But I know excactly where it grows, so next season next try.

The second last picture should be vertical, I dont know how to rotate it without removing and replacing. Sorry.

Bauhinia rufescens

Updated Tuesday 21st June:
Barry helped me out again! This is Bauhinia rufescens. The flowers seem to be white.

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Sorry for the colour quality of the second picture. I edited it too much. The colours should be something between the first and second image!

This is a small tree (big bush) that I collected seed pods from. The leaves look like small bauhinia leaves. Very small indeed, only 1,5 - 2 cm each half. I saw no flowers at the time, so no idea of them. Unfortunately I missed to take a picture of the whole tree. More or less it was impossible because these grew as a very untidy, never cut dense  "hedge" by the road. They were 4-5 meters high.


Barry gets seeds from this one. Noname - his favourite!