Naturalis Biodiversity Center, CC0, via GBIF · observed growing wild

Boswellia rivae Engl.

Burseraceae

Climate known 24 photographs Cactus or succulent

Every figure on this page is derived from public data by a stated rule and says its source; nothing here is written by a person or a model, except the Wikipedia passage, which is quoted and marked as such. How it is made.

About the genus · Boswellia

Boswellia is a genus of trees in the family Burseraceae, known for its fragrant resin. The biblical incense frankincense is an extract from the resin of the tree Boswellia sacra, and is now produced also from B. frereana. Boswellia species are moderate-sized flowering plants, including both trees and shrubs.

Text from Wikipedia, “Boswellia”, CC BY-SA 4.0, quoted as written.

Family

Burseraceae

Described by

Engl.

Native to

Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya

Wild records

23 in range· 22 open

At a glance

Warmest month

35°C

Mar, mean day; nights 24 °C (CHELSA)

Rain

268mm/yr

4 wet months · peak Apr 79 mm (CHELSA)

Light

30–45DLI

mol/m²/day, winter to summer, open sky (CHELSA shortwave)

In short condensed by rule from the cultivation cards · not written by a person

Grouped as a cactus or succulent by the genus Boswellia, which is reliably one kind of plant (archetype table). Rain rule: a sharp rainy season, April to May and October at the habitat (not shifted); the temperature curve is flat (3.1 °C of range), so no growing season is inferred. Habitat rain 268 mm a year, wettest April at 79 mm, driest January at 1 mm (habitat calendar, northern hemisphere). Open sky over the habitat: 30 to 45 mol/m²/day. Cold floor 18.1 °C (1st-percentile habitat night, NASA POWER).

Each sentence is one card's own one-line form, written by the same rule as the card (Its year, Rain, Light, Temperature); the note cannot say what a card does not. Months are given for the northern hemisphere (set your site in Settings to change this), and the habitat's own alongside. The cards · the figures.

Also known as Boswellia boranensis Engl.; Boswellia ruspoliana Engl.

Cultivation

Grouped as a cactus or succulent by the genus Boswellia, which is reliably one kind of plant (archetype table). The table holds no figure for this group, which spans too much for one minimum; the cold floor is the habitat's alone, and no prose comes from the table.

Its year Rain rule: a sharp rainy season, April to May and October at the habitat (not shifted); the temperature curve is flat (3.1 °C of range), so no growing season is inferred.

This species’ habitat figures, and what two fixed rules read from them.

The rain rule reads a sharp season: 70% of the year's rain (190 mm of 268 mm) falls in April to May and October. The temperature curve is flat, 3.1 °C between the warmest and coldest month, so the growing-season rule does not infer a growing season from it. Months are the habitat's, northern hemisphere, within 10° of the equator; with no thermal season there there is no season to reverse, so they are not shifted for a collection elsewhere.

Read from the median year of CHELSA monthly rainfall and mean temperature across the envelope cells: the rain rule takes the smallest set of months carrying 70% of the rain and calls it winter when its mean is more than half a degree below the year's, summer when more than that above, and neither in between; the temperature rule, used only under 120 mm, names the cooler six months when they are at least a degree cooler than the other six. Months are shifted for the other hemisphere only where the temperature curve gives a season to reverse. A reading of the curves, not an observation of the plant.

Rain Habitat rain 268 mm a year, wettest April at 79 mm, driest January at 1 mm (habitat calendar, northern hemisphere).

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

268 mm a year at the habitat, 190 mm of it April to May and October. Wettest month April at 79 mm, driest January at 1 mm; 5 months under 5 mm. Across the envelope cells the year's total runs 183 mm to 380 mm (10th to 90th percentile of each cell's own year) (median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA; habitat calendar, northern hemisphere).

CHELSA monthly precipitation, median year across the envelope cells. The rain that falls where the species is recorded; nothing about how the plant takes water.

Light Open sky over the habitat: 30 to 45 mol/m²/day.

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

Open sky over the habitat: 30 to 45 mol/m²/day across the year (daily light integral, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA; the lowest 10th-percentile month across the cells is 28, the highest 90th-percentile month 47).

CHELSA shortwave radiation at each envelope cell, a daily-mean flux taken to a daily total and converted at 2.07 mol of PAR per MJ. The sky over the habitat, measured; what reaches a plant under a rock, a shrub or a shade cloth is not.

Warmth and air Cold floor 18.1 °C (1st-percentile habitat night, NASA POWER).

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

Temperature

Coldest: the 1st-percentile night over 44 years at the typical cell is 18.1 °C, the absolute minimum 15.7 °C, no frost in 44 years (NASA POWER daily minima). Warmest: the 99th-percentile day is 39.9 °C. Monthly means: coldest night 21.6 °C in January (across the envelope cells 14.9 °C to 24.2 °C), warmest day 34.7 °C in March (median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA). Cold floor: 18.1 °C, which is the 1st-percentile night over 44 years at the typical cell (NASA POWER).

NASA POWER daily minima and maxima 1981–2024 at the typical cell, lapse-corrected to its elevation; CHELSA monthly means, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA. The cold floor is the figure named in its sentence. Not a measured survival limit for any plant in a pot.

Humidity

Relative humidity at the habitat: 46 to 56% across the year (monthly means, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA). A figure about the air, saying nothing about how the plant takes water.

CHELSA relative humidity, median year across the envelope cells.

The figures the cards read from are in Climate below, and where they came from in Natural habitat.

Climate across the habitat

day night rain 10th–90th percentile across 23 habitat cells cold quarter: the three months around the coldest night extremes over 44 years at the typical cell, marked at the edge: undated DLI, mol/m²/dayRH %each on its own scale

Figures by month

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Day °C	33 / 28–35	34 / 29–37	35 / 31–36	33 / 31–34	32 / 31–33	32 / 30–33	32 / 30–33	32 / 30–33	33 / 31–35	32 / 29–33	31 / 29–32	32 / 28–34
Night °C	22 / 15–24	22 / 16–25	24 / 17–26	24 / 20–25	24 / 22–25	23 / 21–25	22 / 20–24	22 / 20–24	23 / 21–24	23 / 19–24	22 / 17–23	22 / 15–24
Rain mm	1 / 0–5	1 / 0–4	18 / 7–42	79 / 49–116	47 / 38–64	2 / 1–7	2 / 1–4	1 / 1–3	6 / 2–15	64 / 42–80	38 / 15–52	9 / 4–19
DLI	42 / 41–43	45 / 44–46	45 / 42–47	38 / 36–43	36 / 34–38	32 / 30–32	30 / 28–32	34 / 32–36	39 / 37–40	35 / 34–38	36 / 33–40	39 / 38–39
RH %	47 / 44–56	46 / 43–54	49 / 46–54	56 / 55–58	56 / 55–59	51 / 50–55	50 / 49–54	50 / 48–53	50 / 48–53	54 / 53–57	56 / 53–57	50 / 46–56

Each figure is the median across the 23 grid cells holding the 23 in-range records, with the 10th–90th percentile span across those cells after the slash where it differs. Extremes and elevation were read at the typical cell 1713:4505 (4.325, 45.275). Over 44 years there: absolute minimum 15.7 °C, 1st-percentile night 18.1 °C, 99th-percentile day 39.9 °C. Normals: CHELSA V2.1 1981–2010 climatology, 0.05° cells (each the mean of ~36 1 km pixels). Envelope: median and 10th–90th percentile of each month across the 23 distinct grid cells holding the 23 in-range records; extremes and elevation at the typical cell 1713:4505 (its coldest month's mean night nearest the median across cells); its position is the cell centre. Extremes: NASA POWER (MERRA-2) daily 1981–2024, cell 4.50_45.000, lapse-corrected -82 m at 6.5 °C/km. Elevation: ETOPO 2022, 208 m (cell mean).

Natural habitat

Native range as published by WCVP; the marker is where the records are densest and decides nothing: the climate was read across every in-range record's cell, not at the marker.

Openly licensed records inside the range, framed on where they fall.

NativeEthiopia, Somalia, Kenya

Kew's description“tree” · “desert or dry shrubland”· quoted from WCVP, RBG Kew (CC BY 4.0); not derived here

Map marker4, 41.867 · in the densest population, 17 records (74% of those in range)

Evidence usedThe map marker and the climate envelope rest on all 23 georeferenced records inside the native range; the map shows only the 22 openly licensed ones, which alone would put the marker in the same place.

The map markerthe map marker: the openly licensed record nearest the middle of the densest 1° population inside the densest 2° block of the 23 in-range records; it decides nothing.

Photographs

Photographs: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, CC BY, via GBIF (7); ELAR corporation (Moscow, Russia), CC BY, via GBIF.

Photographs: iNaturalist did not answer when this page was built; what is shown came from the sources that did.

Papers naming this species

Works whose title or abstract names Boswellia rivae, most cited first, from OpenAlex (CC0). A mention, not a cultivation source: nothing on this page is drawn from them.

In vitroanti-biofilm activity ofBoswelliaspp. oleogum resin essential oils

Domenico Schillaci, Vincenzo Arizza, Talya L. Dayton, Lawrence Camarda (2008) · Letters in Applied Microbiology

The additive and synergistic antimicrobial effects of select frankincense and myrrh oils - a combination from the pharaonic pharmacopoeia

Stephanie Leigh‐de Rapper, Sandy van Vuuren, Guy Kamatou, Alvaro Viljoen (2012) · Letters in Applied Microbiology

Evaluation of Two Olibanum Resins as Rate Controlling Matrix Forming Excipients in Oral Sustained Release Tablets

Dereje Kebebe, Anteneh Belete, Tsige Gebre‐Mariam (2012) · Ethiopian Pharmaceutical Journal

Evaluating the Potential of Boswellia rivae to Provide Sustainable Livelihood Benefits in Eastern Ethiopia

Anjanette DeCarlo, Stephen Johnson, Abdinasir Abdikadir, Prabodh Satyal (2023) · Plants

Ursane and tirucallane-type triterpenes ofBoswellia rivaeoleo-gum resin

Lawrence Onyango Arot Manguro, Samuel Wagai (2016) · Journal of Asian Natural Products Research

Updates and new reports for the flora of northern Somalia (with notes on Dicoma thuliniana and Commiphora playfairii )

Giacomo Baldesi, Riccardo M. Baldini, Lia Pignotti (2023) · Nordic Journal of Botany

Characterization of Boswellia rivae Engl Resin as a Potential Use for Pharmaceutical Excipient

Fanta Gashe, Desta Assefa, Shibiru Tesema, Gemechu Zeleke (2022) · BioMed Research International

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