PlantFiles: Sausage Tree
Kigelia africana

Kigelia Pinnata, popularly called the sausage tree, is a spreading tree bearing long, pendulous racemes of mottled dark flowers which appear like a candelebra. Its fruits are long and woody, sausage like in appearance with long cord-like stalks.

Lofty wide-spreading tree up to 15 m high, often cultivated as an ornament for its cylindrical fruits, which weigh up to 6 kg. The fruits, very similar to large sausages, are eaten by baboons in the wild.

K.africana also grows in South India, mostly in dry decidious forests and in cities as shade-trees alongside roads; very rarely in private gardens. Fascinating tree: the flowers, though dramatic, can knock one down with their overpowering stink of rotting meat! Evidently pollinated by flies, bats and some birds.

Kigelia africana is an African species (obviously), from the savanna, where many animals take advantage of the dense shade, large flowers (for nectar) and fruits. Baboons are said to be frequently seen eating the long fruits.

The dark floiage, the purple, bell shaped flowers and the long, sausage-shaped fruits make an interesting combination. There´s an specimen growing in the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, under totaly different climatic conditions from the original habitat of this species, so I can guess it´s tolerant to humidity and moisture. I believe it needs high temperatures to grow, though.