Natal plum
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Natal plum ( Carissa macrocarpa ) |
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The Natal plum ( Carissa macrocarpa ) is a plant type from the kind of Carissa in the family of Hundsgiftgewächse (Apocynaceae). The plant is native to Africa . The part of the name “plum” refers to the appearance of the fruit; however, the species is not closely related to the plum .
description
The Natal plum is a thorny , richly branched and evergreen plant . It usually grows as a shrub or, more rarely, as a small tree and reaches heights of up to 4–5 meters. The bark is gray-brownish and rough, furrowed. Branches and twigs are reinforced with woody 2 to 4 cm long, often forked, branched thorns. The plant produces a milky sap .
The opposite, entire and mostly bare, simple leaves are leathery, thick, dark green and about 3 to 7 cm long. They are egg-shaped to elliptical or rounded, less often obovate and spiky at the tip. The petiole is very short with a length of 3 to 5 mm.
The Natal plum is gyno , so there are female and hermaphrodite individuals to be found. The female flowers are shorter and narrower than the hermaphrodite. The flowers are terminally in small, golden clusters or they appear individually, they smell sweet and are greenish-white to slightly pink. The hermaphroditic or female flower is up to about 1.1-1.8 cm long, short, thick-stalked and five-fold (rarely six-fold). The narrow-eilanzettlichen, almost bald, tightly fused sepals are 6 mm long and pointed. The corolla is salver-shaped , the long corolla lobes are obovate to lanceolate and up to 1.5–4.5 cm long. The long, narrow corolla tube with hair on the inside is mostly green and slightly cup-shaped in the upper area. The short stamens are up to 3–5 mm long and sit a little above the middle in the corolla tube, in the female flowers the anthers are a lot shorter and functionless, sterile (antherode). The Upper continuous, two-chamber ovary is about 1.5 mm long, the unequal stylus ends with the hermaphrodite flowers slightly below the anthers, in the female it is longer and ends just above it. So there is also a distyly . The thickened stylus head bears the two-lobed stigma , on the female flowers it is glued to the sterile, short antherodes.
The smooth, egg-shaped to ellipsoidal and many-seeded berries are about 3–6 centimeters tall. At first they are green, when they ripen they turn reddish, are partly “frosted” and they contain milky juice that sometimes pushes something through the skin. They are very finely dotted with whitish and at the tip they are sometimes briefly pointed or rounded, and there may be remains of styluses. Chalice remains can also be preserved at the base. The thin-skinned berries contain up to about 16 flattened, about 5-6 millimeters large, roughly elliptical and brownish seeds.
The number of chromosomes is 2n = 66.
Distribution and location
The home of the Natal plum extends from central to southern and southeastern Africa. The occurrences in Africa are in South Africa , Mozambique , Zambia , Zimbabwe , Kenya and the Congo .
Because of its edible fruits, it is now also planted in other countries, such as in southeastern China and the USA ( Texas , Florida and Arizona as well as in Hawaii ) or in Central America and in Jamaica , the Bahamas , as well as in India and the Philippines or in Israel .
The Natal plum grows preferentially in frost-free coastal areas such as dunes and coastal forests and is usually distributed below 500 Hm. It thrives in salty air and is quite wind resistant. The plant is cold tolerant (down to −5 ° C) and drought resistant.
use
The berries of the Natal plum are edible. The thorny shrub is also popular as a hedge.
Systematics
The Basionym Arduina macrocarpa was in 1830 by Christian Friedrich Ecklon in South African Quarterly Journal 1 (4): 372 firstdescribed . The reallocation to Carissa macrocarpa took place in 1844 from Alphonse Pyrame de Candolle in Prodr. 8: 336.
literature
- Marilena Idžojtić: Dendrology. Academic Press, 2019, ISBN 978-0-12-819644-1 , p. 125.
- TK Lim: Edible Medicinal and Non-Medicinal Plants. Volume 1, Fruits , Springer, 2012, ISBN 978-90-481-8660-0 , p. 237 ff.
- Jules Janick, Robert E. Paull: The Encyclopedia of Fruit and Nuts. CABI, 2008, ISBN 0-85199-638-8 , p. 71 f.
Web links
- Carissa macrocarpa at Useful Tropical Plants.
- Carissa macrocarpa at Kew Science.
- Entry with the Flora of China (Eng.)
- Carissa macrocarpa at treesa.org, accessed September 13, 2019.
Individual evidence
- ^ I. Koch, V. Bittrich, LS Kinoshita: Reproductive biology and functional aspects of the floral morphology of Rauvolfia sellowii Müll. Arg. (Apocynaceae; Rauvolfioideae) - a report of dioecy in Apocynaceae. In: Bot. Jahrb. Syst. 124, 2002, pp. 83-104, online at academia.edu., Accessed on September 13, 2019.