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Brachystegia spiciformis
Also called Msasa Tree, Msasa
Brachystegia spiciformis is a medium-sized African savanna tree, known as msasa, that flushes bright red and amber new leaves each spring. It needs a strongly seasonal climate with a hot dry spell before a warm, rainy growing season.
Brachystegia spiciformis, commonly known as zebrawood (not the genuine zebrawood, Microberlinia brazzavillensis), or msasa (spelled as masasa), is a medium-sized African tree having compound leaves and racemes of small fragrant green flowers. The tree is broad and has a distinctive amber and wine red colour when the young leaves sprout during spring (August–September). It grows in savanna, both open woodland and closed woodland of Southern and Eastern Africa, mostly Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique.
The word msasa is commonly used as a proper name in African place names. The word also means 'rough plant' in Swahili.
The msasa is a tropical tree and grows best in open woodland where there is a sharp distinction between wet and dry seasons. The northern end of its range is near Tabora in Tanzania (about 5° S) and its southernmost extent is near Quissico on the coast of Mozambique just outside the tropics (about 25° S). Msasas need a minimum of around 500 mm rain, although the amount of rain in the summer growing season is more important than the annual rainfall. It needs a mean annual temperature of around 19 to 20 °C. It does not thrive under a combination of cold and wet conditions, and like many tropical plants it requires a hot dry period before the onset of the growing season.
Just as its appearance varies greatly from place to place, so does its use. While in some regions, where msasa trees do not grow very tall, it is often heavily branched and used mainly as fuel such as charcoal and firewood, in other parts, such as central and northern Mozambique, it is used for furniture, sleepers, and construction timber. In parts of southern Tanzania, the hard wood is highly sought after. It is also used for beehives, boats, and general construction. It is considered an all-purpose wood. Furniture production has increased, since the wood can be artificially dried in kilns, which prevents further drying and twisting of the processed wood.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Brachystegia spiciformis by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
