Lycium decumbens
Welw. ex Hiern.
SolanaceaeFruit
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(c) pietermier, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
(c) pietermier, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
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(c) jambobwana, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
(c) jambobwana, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
iNaturalist · cc-by-nc
(c) jambobwana, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
(c) jambobwana, 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 deep, sandy and stony soils. It can grow in desert and on dunes. It grows between 3-300 m above sea level. It can grow in arid places.
Africa, Angola, Central Africa, Namibia, South Africa, Southern Africa,
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 small shrub. It often lies along the ground. It loses its leaves during the year. The stems are spiny and the leaves are succulent. It can grow 1.5 m high. The leaves are simple and oval or spoon shaped. They are on small spiny branches. The flowers are mauve and tube shaped. They are 1 cm long. The fruit are small round red berries.
Names & Synonyms
Umbhovu
Lycium marlothii Damm.
References (5)
- Fox, F. W. & Young, M. E. N., 1982, Food from the Veld. Delta Books. p 343
- 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 11th June 2011]
- Ruiters-Welcome, A. K., 2019, Food plants of southern Africa. Ph.D. thesis. Univ. of Johannesburg p 102
- 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
- World Checklist of Useful Plant Species 2020. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
