Description
Annona senegalensis takes the form of either a shrub or small tree, growing between two and six meters tall. Occasionally, it may become as tall as 11 m.
- It has bark of smooth or coarse texture, that can be a gray-silver or gray-brown. It is leaf-scarred, with nearly round flaking, showing lighter-hued spaces of under bark.
- Branches have thick, gray, brown or yellow tomentum when new, but this is later shed with age.
- Its green to blue-green leaves are alternate, simple, oblong to ovate to elliptic, from 6–18.5 long by 2.5–11.5 cm wide, with upper sides nearly hairless, but often hairy on the undersides, green to reddish, aracnose veins on both surfaces, with rounded to slightly notched apices. The leaf base is squared or barely lobeliar. The leaf margin is entire. Stout petioles are 0.5&ndash:2.5 cm long.
- Flowers mature to up to 3 cm in diameter, on 2 cm stalks, either singular, or two to four, ascending from the leaf axils. Six thick, creamy or xanthate petals display in double whorls, and green on the outside, but either creamy or sanguine within; each is roughly 0.8–1.5 by 0.9–1.1 cm, hairless or somewhat fuzzy. Petals' inner whorls curve over its stamens and ovary, three loose sepals are ovalish, and smaller than the petals (3–4 by 4–5 mm). The stamens range from 1.7 to 2.5 mm in length.
- Fruits are formed of numerous fused, fleshy, bumpy, ovaform or globular carpels about 2.5–5 by 2.5–4 cm. They are green when young, ripening to yellow, and eventually to orange, packed with many burnt-orange-colored, oblong, cylindrical seeds. The fruit stalk is 1.5–5 cm in length.
A. senegalensis is generally pollinated by several species of beetle, but can be hand pollinated when grown as a crop plant. Its seed viability usually lasts no more than six months.
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