Terminalia sericea fruits and leaves

The summer foliage and unripe fruits of Terminalia sericea, the silver cluster-leaf, look luxuriant in the Kruger National Park in this January photo. In winter the deciduous tree is leafless for a fairly long season of rest.

New leaves grow only at the stem tips. Ample bare stem is visible behind the clusters of leaves grown on this young tree. The long, narrow leaves have only a little damage from having been eaten. The pale grey stems have sparsely scattered rough spots, darkly coloured. Young branches lower down tend to die, giving the tree a bare lower stem (Coates Palgrave, 2002; Grant, et al, 2001).