Vachellia nilotica

Vachellia nilotica subsp. kraussiana, the scented-pod thorn or scented thorn, in Afrikaans lekkerruikpeul (smelling good pod), is a large shrub or hard-wood tree producing a flattened crown at up to 10 m, commonly only 6 m (SA Tree List No. 179).

The young bark is reddish brown and smooth to hairy without peeling, turning black and deeply furrowed to longitudinally fissured. People eat the gum and make glue from it. The bark is tannin rich. New branchlets are pinkish or green and hairy.

The paired white thorns are straight to bending backwards a little from a shared base.

The twice-compound leaves grow in clusters of up to four per node. The leaves consist of 5 to 11 pairs of pinnae bearing from 12 to 30 pairs of small leaflets. The leaflets are grey-green to deep green with hairy margins.

There are sometimes glands on the rachis between the pinnae pairs and one or two on the hairy petiole. The petioles become up to 12 mm long.

The subspecies distribution is in the northeast of South Africa, in all the provinces north of the Vaal River and KwaZulu-Natal. There are six more subspecies of this tree occurring in Africa beyond the South African border.

The habitat is variable bushveld, wooded grassland and thicket. The trees may proliferate on disturbed land, high rainfall grassland and floodplains. The subspecies is not considered to be threatened in its habitat early in the twenty first century (Coates Palgrave, 2002; Schmidt, et al, 2002; Pooley, 1993; iNaturalist; http://redlist.sanbi.org).