I grew up mostly in Florida, but never once heard that African Sausage Trees are a thing down there. This crossed my radar on account of yesterday’s search for “image142“, which also turned up files such as “image1428“. That produced this strange-to-me-looking image of a tree with what looked like blackened corn dogs growing on its branches.
African Sausage Tree
Naturally enough I asked the searchies what I’m sure everyone does at least 181 times in their life: “do corn dogs grow on trees?” This, through a series of less ludicrous suggestions, led to the possibility that these things were long neck avocados. But their lack of a bulge where the big seed would be inside made that questionable.
I asked some Facebook peeps, who offered up a couple of wrong guesses followed by a win from one who seemed to have been waiting his whole life to wield this piece of trivia.
I did actually figure this out on my own before seeing that response the next day, though I don’t remember the search trail that got me there. Something about “very long fruits that grow on trees”, I think.
This is an African Sausage Tree, native to Africa but found in other places, including Florida. The sausage-shaped fruits are inedible. The image is from a batch of 1567 slides I bought on eBay a long time ago, from a Colorado family that traveled a lot.
Based on context I take this image to be from somewhere around Flagler Beach.
Here’s a pretty cool shot,from the Nature Photography by Pam & Richard blog, shows some African Sausages in Vero Beach. This image, which highlights the distinctiveness of these fruit’s appearance, makes it all the more puzzling how I never heard of or saw any mention of these oddities while growing up in Florida. But you know, Florida is weird.
African Sausage Tree in Vero Beach, FL
