Napoleonaea imperialis

Description

Napoleonaea imperialis is a small, evergreen tropical West African tree in the family Lecythidaceae, native to Africa. It grows to some 6m in height, with a dense, low-branching crown, and occurs from Benin, Nigeria, Gabon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo southwards to Angola. The showy flowers have two inner rows of petals and vary in colour, usually creamy yellow along the circumference, with the center ranging from red to apricot to purple - they develop either on young branches or grow directly from the old wood of the trunk. The fruit is a berry, dark orange or reddish-brown containing a kidney-shaped seed. This species is popularly cultivated as an ornamental tree. The species was described in 1804, the same year its namesake (Napoleone di Buonaparte) crowned himself Emperor of the French.