Terminalia leiocarpa
Species of tree
Terminalia leiocarpa (African birch; Bambara: ngálǎma) is a species of tree in the genus Terminalia. It is a deciduous tree native of tropical Africa from Senegal and Guinea in the west to Eritrea in the east and as far south as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Terminalia leiocarpa germinates in the new soils produced by seasonal wetlands. It is a forest fringe plant, growing at the edges of the rainforest, although not deep in the rainforest. It also grows in savanna, and along riverbanks, where it forms gallery forests. The tree flowers in the rainy season, from June to October. The fruit are winged samaras, and are dispersed by ants.
Ethnobotany
It is one of the plants used to make bògòlanfini, a traditional Malian mudcloth. Small branches with leaves are crushed to make one of the yellow dyes.
The inner bark of the tree is used as a human and livestock anthelmintic for treating worms, and for treatment of a few protozoan diseases in animals, nagana (an animal trypanosomiasis), and babesiosis.
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This entry incorporates text from “Terminalia leiocarpa” 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.