African custard-apple

Description

Annona senegalensis, commonly known as African custard-apple, wild custard apple, wild soursop, sunkungo (Mandinka language), and dorgot (Wolof language) is a species of flowering plant in the custard apple family, Annonaceae. The specific epithet, senegalensis, translates to mean "of Senegal", the country where the type specimen was collected. A traditional food plant in Africa, the fruits of A. senegalensis have the potential to improve nutrition, boost food security, foster rural development and support sustainable land care. Well known where it grows naturally, it is largely unheard of elsewhere Annona senegalensis takes the form of either a shrub or small tree, growing between two and six meters tall. Occasionally, it may become as tall as 11 m. It has bark of smooth or coarse texture, that can be a gray-silver or gray-brown. It is leaf-scarred, with nearly round flaking, showing lighter-hued spaces of under bark. Branches have thick, gray, brown or yellow tomentum when new, but this is later shed with age. Its green to blue-green leaves are alternate, simple, oblong to ovate to elliptic, from 6–18.5 long by 2.5–11.5 cm wide, with upper sides nearly hairless, but often hairy on the undersides, green to reddish, aracnose veins on both surfaces, with rounded to slightly notched apices. The leaf base is squared or barely lobeliar. The leaf margin is entire. Stout petioles are 0.5–2.5 cm long. Flowers mature to up to 3 cm in diameter, on 2 cm stalks, either singular, or two to four, ascending from the leaf axils. Six thick, creamy or xanthate petals display in double whorls, and green on the outside, but either creamy or sanguine within; each is roughly 0.8–1.5 by 0.9–1.1 centimetres (0.31–0.59 by 0.35–0.43 in), hairless or somewhat fuzzy. Petals' inner whorls curve over its stamens and ovary, three loose sepals are ovalish, and smaller than the petals (3–4 by 4–5 mm). The stamens range from 1.7 to 2.5 millimetres (0.067 to 0.098 in) long. The plant flowers from approximately April through June. Its pollen is shed as permanent tetrads. Fruits are formed of numerous fused, fleshy, bumpy, ovaform or globular carpels about 2.5–5 by 2.5–4 centimetres (0.98–1.97 by 0.98–1.57 in).