Heliotropium hereroense
Schinz
Omumbwanda
BoraginaceaeFruit
iNaturalist · cc-by-nc
(c) Troos van der Merwe, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
(c) Troos van der Merwe, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
iNaturalist · cc-by-nc
(c) Troos van der Merwe, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
(c) Troos van der Merwe, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
iNaturalist · cc-by-nc
(c) Troos van der Merwe, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
(c) Troos van der Merwe, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
What to Eat
Edible parts: Fruit
The fruit are eaten raw.
Where to Find It
It is a subtropical plant. It grows in hot arid places and where there is a marked dry season. The dry season can be 6-11 months. It is often in well-drained stony soils. In southern Africa it grows between 170-1,850 m above sea level. It is rare in Swaziland. It can grow in arid places.
Africa, Eswatini, Namibia, South Africa, Southern Africa, Swaziland,
Countries: Angola, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Benin, Botswana, Congo (DRC), Central African Republic, Congo (Republic), Cote d'Ivoire, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Djibouti, Algeria, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Gambia, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Comoros, Liberia, Lesotho, Libya, Morocco, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Somalia, South Sudan, Sao Tome & Principe, Eswatini, Chad, Togo, Tunisia, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe
How to Identify
A herb or small shrub. It grows up to 1 m high. It has a taproot. It keeps growing from year to year. The leaves are narrowly sword shaped. They are in rings. The flowers are very small and yellow.
Names & Synonyms
Heliotropium pseudostrigosum Dinter
References (6)
- Malan & Owen-Smith, 1974,
- Peters, C. R., O'Brien, E. M., and Drummond, R.B., 1992, Edible Wild plants of Sub-saharan Africa. Kew. p 71
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (1999). Survey of Economic Plants for Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (SEPASAL) database. Published on the Internet; http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/ceb/sepasal/internet [Accessed 4th April 2011]
- Ruiters-Welcome, A. K., 2019, Food plants of southern Africa. Ph.D. thesis. Univ. of Johannesburg p 38
- Swaziland's Flora Database http://www.sntc.org.sz/flora
- Welcome, A. K. & Van Wyk, B.-E., 2019, An inventory and analysis of the food plants of southern Africa. South African Journal of Botany 122 (2019) 136–179
