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Home Home » TYPES » Trees » Cunonia capensis fruits forming
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Cunonia capensis fruits forming

Cunonia capensis fruits forming
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  • Cryptocarya woodii stems
  • Cryptocarya woodii upper branches
  • Cryptocarya woodii, the river wild-quince
  • Cunonia capensis
  • Cunonia capensis buds
  • Cunonia capensis butterspoon or els
  • Cunonia capensis creamy blooms
  • Cunonia capensis florets
  • Cunonia capensis fruits forming
  • Cunonia capensis leaflets
  • Cunonia capensis trunk
  • Dais cotinifolia
  • Dais cotinifolia flower clusters or pompons
  • Dalbergia melanoxylon
  • Dalbergia melanoxylon bark
  • Dalbergia melanoxylon dwarf shoot
  • Dalbergia melanoxylon flowers

Image information

Description

The tiny Cunonia capensis fruits are forming on the green cylindrical spike that was an inflorescence some days earlier. The fruit is stalked, purplish in colour at this stage with two tiny horns protruding from its tip.

When the brown or red-brown fruit is ripe by mid-autumn to midwinter it will split, sometimes only after a long waiting period. Numerous small sticky seeds are released, often adhering to feet, feathers and bills of visiting birds, the unwitting seed dispersal agents. And what the birds do not get, the wind will spread.

The stem-tip growth that does much for easy tree identification resembles a butterspoon, resulting in one of the tree's common names of butterspoon tree. Two large, flat bracts are pressed together at the tip of a long, straight stalk. Between them the new growth is initially protected (Coates Palgrave, 2002; Van Wyk and Van Wyk, 1997; http://pza.sanbi.org).

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743
Photographer
Thabo Maphisa
Author
Ivan Latti
 
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