Fabaceae FAMILY

Brachystegia longifolia

Edibility

0/5

Medicinal

2/5

Safety & Hazards

None known

Cultivation Details

HabitDeciduous Tree

Growth—

Succeeds on poor soils^[1]. Trees respond well to coppicing^[2]. Although many species within the family Fabaceae have a symbiotic relationship with soil bacteria, this species is said to be devoid of such a relationship and therefore does not fix atmospheric nitrogen^[3].

Propagation

Seed - Cite as: Tropical Plants Database, Ken Fern. tropical.theferns.info. 2026-02-19. <tropical.theferns.info/viewtropical.php?id=Brachystegia+longifolia>

Pollinators

Data unavailable

References

[1]Useful Plants of Nyasaland — Williamson J. · The Government Printer, Zomba, Nyasaland. · 1955 · http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org ↩︎Brief details of the uses of almost 500 species of plants.
[2]Protabase - Plant Resources of Tropical Africa. — http://www.prota.org ↩︎An excellent on-line database with detailed information on over 3,200 species of useful plants of Africa.
[3]Nodulation Plants in GRIN Taxonomy — United States Department of Agriculture · http://www.ars-grin.gov/~sbmljw/cgi-bin/taxnodul.pl?language=en ↩︎An online database listing plants that have either positive or negative reports on root and stem nodulation with nitrogen-fixing bacteria.
[4]Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information — Royal Botanic Gardens; Kew · 1923 · http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org ↩︎A botanical journal, it contains a rather dated but still useful treatment of the genus Brachystegia with quite a lot of information on plant uses. It can be downloaded from the Internet.