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Hippobromus

Hippobromus · Kew POWO · Kew Plants of the World Online

EntityQ9003930· pop 6· linked from 8 articles

Hippobromus

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Hippobromus is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Sapindaceae. Its native range is Southern Africa. The only species is Hippobromus pauciflorus (Afrikaans: Baster-perdepis = false horse urine), commonly known as false horsewood.

Species

GENUS

  1. KingdomPlantae
  2. PhylumTracheophyta
  3. ClassMagnoliopsida
  4. OrderSapindales
  5. FamilySapindaceae
Native toCape Provinces, Eswatini, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Provinces

via GBIF · Kew POWO

Museum specimens

Specimen records
69
With media
66
Family
Sapindaceae
Collections
RSA, NY, VT, MO, B, F
Recorded in
Eswatini, South Africa, áFrica Do Sul

~1 min read

Encyclopedic overview

2 sections
Contents
  • Description
  • References

Hippobromus is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Sapindaceae. Its native range is Southern Africa. The only species is Hippobromus pauciflorus (Afrikaans: Baster-perdepis = false horse urine), commonly known as false horsewood.

==Description== It is a small semi-deciduous tree occurring on the margins of forest, stream banks and in scrub forest. Frequently growing as a tall, slender sapling and accordingly prized as wattle for hut-building. Leaves long, paripinnate with some 5 pairs of leaflets which are extremely variable in shape, wedge-shaped at the base, entire, dentate or deeply lobed, sessile and winged on the rachis between leaflets. Panicles up to long and many-flowered. Fruits are about in diameter, black, pulpy and unpalatable. All parts of the tree have an unpleasant odour when bruised. Fourcade describes the wood as "very heavy and hard, very strong, moderately elastic, close-grained ... heartwood brown, sapwood white, tinged with brown, used for wagon-work and other purposes. The wood and leaves contain a strongly scented resinous and oily substance, which renders them readily inflammable." This tree is found along the east coast from the Eastern Cape, through KwaZulu Natal, Eswatini and further inland through the Transvaal up to the Soutpansberg.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Hippobromus” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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