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Commiphora africana
Commiphora africana, African myrrh or hairy corkwood, is a small deciduous tree or large shrub of the Burseraceae found across dry sub-Saharan Africa, usually about 5 m tall with spiny branch tips and aromatic gum. It is a species, not a houseplant, and it needs hot, dry, free-draining conditions.
Commiphora africana, commonly called African myrrh, is a small deciduous tree belonging to the Burseraceae, a family akin to the Anacardiaceae, occurring widely over sub-Saharan Africa in Angola, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Chad, Eswatini, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. On sandy soils this species sometimes forms pure stands, deserving consideration as a plant community or association.
Closely related to C. glandulosa, C. africana is usually some 5m tall, its branchlets often ending in spines. Its bark is grey-green, peeling to reveal a shiny surface, red when damaged, and then exuding bdellion, a clear, edible, aromatic gum ('Commiphora'='gum-bearing').
Hill Mango · Balsam of Mecca · Abyssinian Myrrh · African Myrrh
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Commiphora africana 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.
