Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Gentianales > Loganiaceae > Strychnos > Strychnos spinosa

Strychnos spinosa (Natal orange)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Strychnos spinosa (Bambara: Kankoroba) is a tree indigenous to tropical and subtropical Africa. It produces juicy, sweet-sour, yellow fruits, containing numerous hard brown seeds. Greenish-white flowers grow in dense heads at the ends of branches (Sep-Feb/Spring - summer). The fruits tend to appear only after good rains. It is related to the deadly Strychnos nux-vomica, which contains strychnine. The smooth, hard fruit are large and green, ripen to yellow colour. Inside the fruit are tightly packed seeds (toxic?) surrounded by a fleshy, edible covering.Animals such as baboon, monkeys, bushpig, nyala and eland eat the fruit. The leaves are a popular food source for browsers such as duiker, kudu, impala, steenbok, nyala and elephant. It is believed that various insects pollinate the flowers.
View Wikipedia Record: Strychnos spinosa

Attributes

Lifespan [1]  Perennial
Specific Gravity [2]  0.646
Structure [1]  Shrub

Protected Areas

Name IUCN Category Area acres Location Species Website Climate Land Use
Kruger National Park II 4718115 Mpumalanga, South Africa

Predators

Pulvinaria vangueriae[3]
Taurotragus derbianus (giant eland)[4]

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
1USDA Plants Database, U. S. Department of Agriculture
2Chave J, Coomes D, Jansen S, Lewis SL, Swenson NG, Zanne AE (2009) Towards a worldwide wood economics spectrum. Ecology Letters 12: 351-366. Zanne AE, Lopez-Gonzalez G, Coomes DA, Ilic J, Jansen S, Lewis SL, Miller RB, Swenson NG, Wiemann MC, Chave J (2009) Data from: Towards a worldwide wood economics spectrum. Dryad Digital Repository.
3Ben-Dov, Y., Miller, D.R. & Gibson, G.A.P. ScaleNet 4 November 2009
4"Diet Composition of Western Derby eland (Taurotragus derbianus derbianus) in the Dry Season in a Natural and a Managed Habitat in Senegal using Faecal Analyses", Pavla Hejcmanová, Miloslav Homolka, Markéta Antonínová, Michal Hejcman & Veronika Podhájecká, South African Journal of Wildlife Research 40(1):27-34. 2010
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0