| DESCRIPTION: A scrambling shrub or climber with long slender branches, yellow-brown bark, with light brown slash. Flowers 4-8 cm long, dense, subsessile in axillary white spikes. USE: Palatable but lightly browsed. Much used for making impenetrable live fences. Long, straight shoots used as walking sticks, bows, poles. Bark used for ropes. Ethno-medicine against syphilis, boils, helminthiasis and wound treatment, headache, toothache, respiratory diseases. GROWING PERIOD: Perennial. COMMON NAMES: Flamethorn, Vlamdoring. FURTHER INF: Occasionally forming dense thickets at the Sahelian-Sudanian ecozones border, particularly in post-clearing successions, often associated with Combretum micranthum. Often located on termitaria, and particularly on shallow hardpans. Common along water courses with a favourable water supply. Found on shallow iron or lateritic hardpans, with a silty to loamy surface layer. |