Plants shrubs or trees, up to 5 m tall, unarmed; bbark smooth, usually peeling off in yellowish or whitish paery flakes; branchlets thick, subterete or or somewhat furroed, tending to bend down, glabrous to puberulent. Leaves petiolate; petioles 0.5-10 cmm long; blades pinnately compoound, with 1-5(-7) leaflets, glabrous to pubescent; leaflets ovate to elliptic or suborbiculat, 5-11(-15) cm long and 3-8(-9) cm wide, upper surfaces often with small blisters when mature, margins, entire, tips acute. Inflorescences narrow panicles 1.5-16 cm long. Flowers pedicellate; pedicels 1(-1.5) mm long; calyces 2-3 mm long puberulent; petals aabout 3 mm long, creamy or white, glabrous to sparsely puberulent; stamens 8, about 2 mm long. Fruits ellipsoid to subglobose,2-celled, about 11-13 mm long and 11 mm wide, puberulent; pericarp 2-valved, very fleshy; pseudoaril a short basal cup with somewhat narrowly lobed maring; stones about 7-8 mm long, 5 mm thick in one direction, 4.5 mm thick in the other direct, the sterile cells about twice as thick as the fertile cell.
Commiphoa guidottii grows in open acacia-Commiphoa bushland on gypsum at 70-1300 m. It is known from regions N2-3, C1-2, and S1 of the Flora of Somalia, plus the Somali Region of Ethiopia. Its resin is a major export commodity. It is also used against stomach complains, in treating wounds, as a cleansing agent, and to expel the placenta after childbirth.
Plants with leaves having 1 leaflet, but otherwise resembling plants with more leaflets, are frequent around Las Anod in Somaliland but are found occasionally in regions N3 and C1. They are considered the same as plants with more leaflets by Thulin and Somalis.
Gebrehiwot, M. K. Asres, D. Bisrat, A. Mazumder, P. Lindemann & F. Bucar. 2015. Evaluation of the wound healing property of Commiphora guidottii Chiov. ex. Guid. BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies. 15: 282.