Ah, but they do in Africa:

If someone said Kigelia africana to you, you would likely have little idea of the appearance of this handsome tree.  Unless you happen to speak  Mozambican Bantu, that is, as kigeli-keia means sausage in Bantu.

It is a striking tree, evergreen if it has a reliable source of water, but deciduous in areas with long dry spells. This particular tree was in the Okavango Delta, so although it was July and  the dry season, the sausage trees were doing well on delta water.  In contrast, most other types of tree in the area had lost the majority of their leaves.

It has shiny, green leaves that form groups of three at the ends of the branches and are 10-20 cm long.

Not surprisingly, however, it is better known for its fruits than its leaves.

These sausage-shaped woody berries are 30-100 cm long and 7.5-18 cm in diameter and they are heavy, weighing in at anywhere between 5 and 10 kg. They cause considerable damage to passing vehicles and fatal injury to humans who are careless enough to pass beneath the tree.  No matter how delectably shady a spot it may seem, do not be tempted to picnic beneath it!

The fruit pulp is fibrous and pulpy, and contains numerous seeds. It is a popular food with many animals and birds, including baboons, warthogs, elephants, giraffes, monkeys and parrots.

The tree also boasts an attractive, tubular dark-red flower.  The flowers only open at night, however, and are pollinated by bats and hawk-moths.

Sausage trees are important to the local human communities too, for many reasons.  Indeed, they are sacred to some people and are often protected when other forest trees are cut down. In Kenya, the Luo and Luhya people bury a fruit to symbolise the body of a lost person believed to be dead.

In the Okavango Delta, their wood is ideal for fabricating  the local means of transport, the mokoro, or dug-out canoe.  Though, to protect this and other trees in the area, mokoros are now generally made of fibre glass.

In African herbal medicine, the fruit is believed to be a cure for a wide range of ailments, from rheumatism, snakebites, evil spirits, syphilis and skin cancer.

Linked to the Festival of Leaves and Travel Photo Monday.