Colophospermum mopane posed photo

This lemon-yellow mopane fruit poses against its green leaf as if for a police mugshot. Both leaf and fruit droop on stalks in the hot conditions where the Colophospermum mopane trees grow.

An asymmetrical kidney-shape and a dull, greenish yellow colour are about the only features divulged by the fruit.

The leaf offers more: The angular and rounded shapes of the two halves are intriguingly unequal, like the human face when photos of it are halved down the centre and two faces completed using the same half inverted and matched with itself.

In picture, the halves of this leaf are widest at different places: the half on the left widest at the top, the other lower down. The outer margin is winding or sinuate on the one, smoothly curved on the other. The veins also differ on the two sides. They are clearly shown on these surfaces, down to the smaller, reticulated net-veining (Coates Palgrave, 2002).