Commiphora campestris Engl.

Small spiny trees with stout, short, fluted irregular trunks, massive branches and stout, stiff, straight spine-tipped twigs; outer bark peeling in brownish yellow flakes from the greenish yellow under-bark; slash smooth, pale or faintly pinkish; exudate not copious, usually faintly pear-scented.. Leaves yellowish green or glaucous, always 3-foliolate on short-shoots, sometimes 5–7-foliolate on long-shoots; petiole ± as long as the terminal leaflet or longer; lateral leaflets suborbicular-elliptic, usually at least half as large as the terminal, which is cuneate or spathulate-oblong or obovate rounded at the apex, 15–30(– 60) mm. long, 10–15(–40) mm. wide, entire or occasionally sparsely crenate.. Male flowers reddish orange in 4–6-flowered pedunculate ± pubescent dichasial cymes; bracteoles narrowly ovate, ± 0.7 mm. long; peduncles up to 30 mm. long; calyx usually pubescent, ± 1.7 mm. long including ± 0.6 mm. triangular lobes; petals glabrous, widened above, reflexed near the apiculate tip, ± 5.5 mm. long; filaments 4 and 2.2 mm., anthers 0.8 and 0.4–7 mm. long.. Female flowers rather smaller in short 1–3-flowered inflorescences.. Fruit borne singly on (2–)3–5(–9) mm. stalks, flattened-ellipsoid or flattened-spheroid, not or hardly beaked, usually almost 12 × 12 × (3 + 5.5) mm. but smaller in certain forms; pericarp 2-valved; pseudaril 4-armed, all arms linear or that over the fertile face wider and very irregular, sometimes with detached islets of pseudarillar tissue on the stone which is black when mature, smooth, 7–10 × 6–10 × (1.5–2 + 4–4.5) mm.; apical pits minute; germination shield obscure; sterile locule gently convex, not humped or ridged, the stone thus asymmetrically elliptic when viewed from above.

It is a tropical plant. In East Africa it grows between 10-1,200 m above sea level. It grows in areas with an annual rainfall between 230-800 mm. It can grow in arid places.

The gum is chewed.