Parkia filicoidea Oliv. or African locust bean ('filicoidea' - fern-like foliage), is a large, spreading flat-crowned tree to 30 metres tall, the bole of which may be narrowly buttressed to a height of about 3 metres, and up to 120cm DBH. It occurs in wet evergreen or semi-deciduous forest, sometimes on forest fringes, riverbanks and lakes, termite mounds, at elevations up to 1000 metres from Côte d’Ivoire, east to Sudan and Somalia, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi and south to Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Bark on trunk scaly or smooth, grey to yellow-brown, branchlets glabrous to puberulous.