Commiphora zanzibarica Engl.

Tree, often many-stemmed, up to 12 m. tall; bark smooth, grey, outer layer peeling in large straw-coloured pieces; slash green to cream; exudate scanty, milky, hardly scented; young shoots glabrous or minutely puberulous, fluted, 3–4 mm. in diameter.. Leaves up to 33 cm. long including a petiole up to 11 cm. and a terminal leaflet up to 10 cm. on a petiolule up to 1 cm. long, 7–9(–11)-foliolate; leaflets glabrous, oblong-elliptic, acuminate, rounded or broadly pointed at the base on petiolules 2–4 mm. long, up to 12 cm. long and 5 cm. wide.. Flowers glabrous, yellowish green or pinkish, appearing with the young leaves in narrow glabrous or subglabrous panicles which maybe up to 48 cm. long, the ♀ almost as long as the ♂, often hanging down when in fruit; bracts narrow, 1–2 mm. long or the lower ones up to 5 mm.; lateral branches up to 15 mm., pedicels up to 7 mm. long.. Receptacle obconical, ± 1.3 mm. deep and wide.. Calyx ± 3 mm., the ovate-oblong lobes ± twice as long as the tube.. Petals 4–5 mm.. Filaments 4 and 3 mm., anthers ± 0.8 mm. long.. Fruiting pedicels much thickened, up to 1 cm. long; fruit ellipsoid-obovoid, shortly beaked, probably 18 × 14 × (5+6) mm. when fresh, wrinkled and 16 × 10 × (3+4) mm. when dry; pericarp 2-valved, very fleshy, ± 3 mm. thick; pseudaril a very shallowly lobed fleshy cup ± 8 mm. deep and wide; stone smoothly convex, flattened-ellipsoid, ± 11 × 8.5 × (2.5+4.5) mm., often persistent after the 2 valves of the pericarp have fallen (perhaps because Hornbills maybe absent?).. Fig. 11/8–10, p. 68.

A tropical plant. It grows in low altitude river valleys and in coastal thickets. It grows in ht dry places.