**3.1 Description**

*S. senegalensis* (A. DC.) Pichon is a large woody liana with white latex [59], from the Apocynaceae family [60]. The fruit is known as maad (Senegal), zaban (Mali), malombo (Congo Basin), wèda (Burkina Faso) and côcôta (Côte d'Ivoire) [61]. A climbing plant species that clings on other plants for support and growth (**Figures 3** and **4**). Saba trees are upwardly mobile plant found in tropical West Africa and the Western Sudan [62]. The plant can be grown in different ecological zones with rainfall from 100 mm to 1300 mm per annum and an altitude of 0–800 m [63]. Saba can withstand bush fire and has the ability to suppress

*Lesser Known African Indigenous Tree and Fruit Plants: Recent Evidence from Literatures… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104890*

**Figure 3.** *Saba senegalensis plants.*

**Figure 4.** *Staked Saba senegalensis plants.*

weed (**Figure 5**). The bark has a dark gray color [64, 65] and it can reach up to 40 meters with the trunk above 40 cm in diameter [64, 66]. *S. senegalensis* fruit is a globulous envelope which contains seeds coated with yellow juicy pulp [67] (**Figure 6**). Juice from the fruit has become popular in urban areas of Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Guinée, Burkina Faso, Senegal and the Gambia. *S. senegalensis* fruit has yellow pulp that is acidulous, tasty, sweet–sour when ripe and can be consumed directly or processed into other products [60, 67]. The fruits are often traded in towns and cities in most of the West African countries. In Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, clusters of the fruits are been sold like oranges along the roadways. In Nigeria, the fruits of Saba are available from April to August.

**Figure 5.** *Saba senegalensis flower.*

**Figure 6.** *Saba senegalensis fruit.*
