1. Home
2. Canavalia africana

Canavalia africana

Botanic Family

Fabaceae

Author

Dunn

Common Names

• Moodu-awara
• Sem
• Wild Sword Bean
• Kihalo (kiha)

Geographical Habitats

• Angola
• Bangladesh
• Benin
• Burkina Faso
• Cameroon
• Central African Republic
• Chad
• Eritraea
• Ethiopia
• Ghana
• Guinea
• Guinea Bissau
• India
• Ivory Coast
• Kenya
• Malawi
• Mali
• Mozambique
• Myanmar
• Nigeria
• Pakistan
• Rwanda
• Senegal
• Sierra Leone
• Somalia
• Natal
• Northern Provinces - South Africa
• Sri Lanka
• Sudan
• Tanzania
• Thailand
• Togo
• Uganda
• Yemen
• Zaire
• Zambia
• Zimbabwe

Natural Habitats

• Forest edges
• secondary & disturbed areas.
• riverside
• lakeside
• thickets

Flowering Times

• Dec-Aug (Zimbabwe) Jan
• Mar
• Aug
• Nov (Tanzania)

Fruiting Times

Perennial mostly glabrous herbaceous climber to 15m. Mostly glabrous leaves, leaflets to 170mm long. 20-40 flowered axillary racemes of mauve flowers with white veins, often greenish towards base, calyx to 15mm long, petals to 30mm long. Pod to 500mm long, hairy when young.

Rattles

Further References

• Fzim
• The Plant List 2
• Jstor
• ILDIS
• BMI
• Mobot