Entada elephantina
Southern African plant species
Entada elephantina, commonly known as the eland's wattle or elephant's root, is a species of subshrub in the mimosoid clade of legumes. It occurs widely in southern Africa, ranging from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia through Eswatini, Lesotho, and South Africa.
The species was first described as Acacia elephantina by William John Burchell in 1824. It has been known by a number of synonynms. In 2022 Shawn A. O'Donnell and Gwilym Peter Lewis placed the species in genus Entada as E. elephantina.
Description
They have a suffrutescent habit typical of their genus. They produce unbranched and unarmed aerial stems of less than a metre tall. The various populations show considerable variation in terms of the number of pinnae pairs and the number, size and shape of the leaflets. They flower from September to November and are pollinated mainly by the African honeybee. The flowering racemes are typically confined to the lower part of the stem, so that the pods are usually suspended just above ground level, or alternatively rest inconspicuously on the ground.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Entada elephantina” is southern African plant species. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Entada, elephantina and Southern, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “southern African plant species” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15534693. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1824 and 2022.
Current terminology should not be projected backward without checking the classification used when the underlying evidence was created. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Entada elephantina” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.