English: Wild mango; African mango; Bush mango; Dika; Dika Nut; Ogbono.
Region: tropical Africa, Nigeria to Central African Republic, south to Congo, DR Congo, Angola.
Habitat: evergreen, dense, moist, lowland rain-forest; moist to wet, lowland tropics; elevations from 200 - 500 metres; sunny position, tolerating light shade; well-drained, acidic soils; fairly wet, well-drained loamy to clayey soils.
Content: vitamins; tannin; alkaloid.
Use: seeds for food, extracting kernels from the split seed, then dried in the sun; cotyledons in soups, food flavouring, pleasant taste, lingering slight bitterness; seed for the preparation of odika, or dika bread; kernels for ovéke, soaked kernels knead into a cheese-like paste; cotyledons dried and ground to a brown flour; kernel for vegetable oil, margarine; fruit pulp for drinks, jam production, turpentine flavour; tree for shade for crops, cocoa and coffee; wax for medicinal tablets; fruit pulp for black dye for cloth; seed fat for soap-making, industrial uses: wood for the most rugged construction work, railway-ties, house building, street paving, canoes, pestles for yam-mortars.
BotanyLarge, evergreen tree; dense, compact crown; 15 - 40 metres or more tall.
Stem: generally straight; up to 100 cm in diameter; with high buttresses that can reach 6 metres; sapwood is light brown; heartwood a slightly darker, greenish-brown, tough, very heavy, very hard, durable, immune to termite attack, rather difficult to split, fine moderately close grain, good polished finish, not easy to cut.
Fruit: ellipsoidal to cylindrical; 40 - 65 mm long, 42 - 64 mm wide, 34 - 60 mm thick, smooth, green at maturity; mesocarp bright orange, soft and juicy with few weak fibres; yellow, fibrous, like a small mango, similar flavour; sweet edible fruit-pulp.
Seeds: 25 - 38 mm long, 17 - 27 mm wide, 8 - 12 mm thick; endosperm almost non-existent.