Johanneksenleipäpuu – Ceratonia siliqua

Bark is brown and rough. Leaves are 10-20 cm long, alternate, pinnate, with or without a terminal leaflet. Leaflets are 3-7 cm long, ovate to elliptic, 4-10 normally in opposite pairs, leathery, dark green and shiny above, pale green beneath, finely veined with margins slightly undulate. Flowers are small, numerous, 6-12 mm long, spirally arranged along the inflorescence axis in catkin-like racemes borne on spurs from old wood and even on the trunk (cauliflory). Flowers are placed on a short pedicel and are functionally male, female or hermaphrodite. A tree is usually unisexual, but may also have different types of flowers. All flowers have a reddish calyx usually with 5 short sepal lobes, a broad hypogynous disk ca. 2-4 mm wide, and no petals. Female flowers have a pistil on the disk and rudimentary stamens, males have 5 stamens and in the center of the disk there is a rudimentary pistil. In hermaphrodite flowers both the pistil and the stamens are functional. Fruit is an indehiscent legume, elongated, compressed, straight or curved, 10-30 x 1-3 cm, brown, with wrinkled surface, leathery when ripe, with blunt or subacute apex. Seeds occur in the fruit transversally, separated by mesocarp, numerous, compressed ovate-oblong, 8-10 mm long, testa hard, smooth, glossy brown.