Crotalaria cleomifolia
Welw. ex Baker
(c) Marco Schmidt, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), uploaded by Marco Schmidt
(c) Marco Schmidt, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA)
What to Eat
Edible parts: Leaves, Fruit, Vegetable
The leaves are cooked and eaten as a green vegetable. The fruit pods can also be eaten.
Where to Find It
It is a tropical plant. It grows in grassy or wooded savannah in damp sites near streams in West Africa. It grows between 1,150-2,650 m above sea level. It can grow in arid places.
Africa, Angola, Asia, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central Africa, Central African Republic, CAR, Congo, East Africa, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinée, Indochina, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sahel, SE Asia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Vietnam, West Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe,
How to Identify
A semi-woody shrub. It grows 2-4 m high. The leaves are compound. They have 3-5 leaflets each 5-11 cm long. The flowers are yellow. They are in groups 20-40 cm long at the ends of branches. The fruit are pods 4-5 cm long and contain 30-40 seeds.
How to Grow
Plants can be grown from seeds. They can also be grown from semi-ripe cuttings.
Names & Synonyms
Sucsac la-mangmang, Zumba
References (7)
- Abukutsa-Onyango, M.O., 2004. Crotalaria brevidens Benth. [Internet] Record from Protabase. Grubben, G.J.H. & Denton, O.A. (Editors). PROTA (Plant Resources of Tropical Africa), Wageningen, Netherlands. < http://database.prota.org/search.htm>. Accessed 15 October 2009.
- Burkill, H. M., 1985, The useful plants of west tropical Africa, Vol. 3. Kew.
- East African Herbarium records, 1981,
- Fowler, D. G., 2007, Zambian Plants: Their Vernacular Names and Uses. Kew. p 36
- Grubben, G. J. H. and Denton, O. A. (eds), 2004, Plant Resources of Tropical Africa 2. Vegetables. PROTA, Wageningen, Netherlands. p 234
- Peters, C. R., O'Brien, E. M., and Drummond, R.B., 1992, Edible Wild plants of Sub-saharan Africa. Kew. p 131
- 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 28th April 2011]
