i Parkia biglobosa - School of Forest Resources & Environmental ...

Botany
History
Chapter 5 Parkia biglobosa
In 1757, Michel Adanson first recorded Parkia biglobosa during his collecting
trips to Senegal and the Gambia. Although Adanson did not name the tree, in 1763
Nicolas Jacquin formally published the valid binomial name of Mimosa biglobosa. It is
interesting to note that Jacquin’s description and plant material came from tree specimens
in the West Indies. The trees were presumably introduced from West Africa during the
transatlantic slave trade. Palisot de Beauvois, a botanist who traveled both the West
Indies and West Africa, realized the link and described the species as Inga biglobosa. He
published his discovery in 1816.
Robert Brown in 1826 suggested renaming and reclassifying these plant materials
under the same genus, Parkia, to commemorate Mungo Park. Park was a Scottish
surgeon who explored western Africa in the 1790s following the course of Niger River.
Park had mentioned these trees by the local name nitta, in his ‘Travels in the Interior
Districts of Africa’ published in 1799. In 1842, Bentham included Asian forms into the
genus Parkia. Historical literature regarding P. biglobosa can be confusing with
overlapping descriptions and names describing one species. Currently the described
species within the genus Parkia number twenty-four; ten species occur in tropical South
America, ten species in tropical Asia, and four species in Africa (Hall et al., 1997).
Parkia biglobosa (Jacq.) Benth belongs in the family Leguminosae and the
subfamily Mimosoideae (Hopkins 1983). Some major synonyms for P. biglobosa are: P.
africana R. Br., P. intermedia Oliver, P. oliveri J.F. Macbr., P. clappertoniana Keay.
44