Upper Ridge Woodlands
In this drier habitat grow attractive woodlands with little or no shrub layer. Often there is only sparse grass and leaf litter under the trees. For a short period at the start of the rains, these woodlands paint the hills red with the color of their new leaves. The dominant trees here are species of Brachystegia, e.g. B. bussei and B. longifolia. They all have pinnate "fern-like" leaves, and in dry season bear large pods like wooden bean pods, with seeds that are an important dry-season crop for chimps. Also common is Uapaca kirkiana, small brittle trees with large shiny crinkly leaves and sweet-tasting round yellow fruit, and some trees such as Pterocarpus, which you will have seen lower down.
On some lower slopes and upper ridges, forest gives way to a more open woodland with scattered deciduous trees set amid tall Hyparrhenia grassland. In the dry season, devastating fires can sweep through this area, and the trees that survive best are those with a thick corky bark that insulates living tissues from searing flames. Many of the trees are small (5-15 meters), and many bear fruit during the dry season at the end of their annual growing season. Some of these fruits are a very important source of food for chimpanzees and baboons in the dry season.
These trees are common:
1. Annona senegalensis is a wild relative of the custard-apple, and is one of the Park's commonest trees. Its leaves are large, oval and wavy and its fruit looks like a large green strawberry, turning yellowish when ripe.
2. Diplorhynchus condylocarpon is a small tree with thick, ridged bark. It produces short woody pods, joined at the base in pairs. The tree has a sticky white latex, and chimps who eat these fruits become encrusted with a gummy mess.
3. Terminalia and Combretum species have small dark red fruits with 2 or 4 thin flanges surrounding them, to aid in wind dispersal.
4. Strychnos bears round shiny green fruits as big as oranges. These have a hard woody shell and you may see or hear chimps beating them against a branch to get at the intensely bitter but juicy pulp.
5. Hymenocardia acidula has smooth bark and winged fruits with a sour taste.
6. Erythrina abyssinica is conspicuous at the end of dry season when, before coming into leaf, it bears spikes of scarlet blossoms at the ends of its bare branches.
Woodland mammals are few; the most obvious species are vervet monkeys, olive baboons and bushbuck.
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