The tree has many uses. Its sweet fragrance is valued, and its fruit is used to spice dishes, such as Banga soup.[3][4] It is mostly used to prepare palm nut soup and other types of soups called light soup because of its aroma.
Description
A medium grey barked deciduous tree that can grow up to 25 m tall, the trunk is slender and straight while the slash is reddish and scented.[5] Its leaves are bipinnately compound, up to 5 - 9 of mostly opposite pinnae and each pinnae having 12 - 24 leaflets. Leaflets alternate, can reach 2 cm long and 1 cm wide, they are narrowly oblong to elliptic in shape and rounded at both the apex and the base.[5] The inflorescence is arranged in spike-like axillary racemes with the flowers pinkish cream to orange brown in color.[5] Its fruit is a shiny dark brown to almost black pod with four wing like ridges, two hard and woody ridges and two rather soft ridges, the latter two has an edible pulp.[5] The fruit typically hangs at the edges of branches and[6] inside the pod are tiny rattling black to brownish seeds.
Distribution
Native to Tropical Africa, from Senegal in West Africa to Sudan and Kenya and southwards to Tanzania and Angola.[7]
References
^Margaret Steentoft (9 June 1988), Flowering plants in West Africa, Cambridge University Press, 1988, ISBN978-0-521-26192-0, ... aidan tree (Tetrapleura tetraptera) fruits are similarly useful, the seeds being rich in oil ...
^Thomas E. Kyei; Jean Marie Allman (2001), Our days dwindle: memories of my childhood days in Asante, Heinemann, 2001, ISBN978-0-325-07042-1, ... Prekese The tree bore large fruits, bits of which were used as spice in soups. The pungent scent of its fruit earned for it the ... ("Prekese, the insuppressible, whose presence permeates houses as he touches at its outskirts ...
^Herbert M. Cole; Doran H. Ross (1977), The arts of Ghana, Museum of Cultural History, University of California, 1977, ... A plant with a strong, sweet scent (Soup Perfume) is the fourth umbrella subject. It signifies that the chief's presence ... The Asantes call it "prekese(Soup Perfume) the sweet scenter, whose fodor is felt in all houses when it starts from the end of town" ...
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