Description
African wintersweet (SA Tree List No. 638) or duinegifboom in Afrikaans is planted by gardeners who accept that many garden plants are poisonous and that care should be taken in protecting (and educating) especially children about plants, rather than avoiding or banning them. Gardeners who eradicate a poisonous plant when they discover the fact, may well still house dozens of others that are equally poisonous.
This small tree which is often only a shrub, grows naturally in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal coastal woodland, rarely far from the sea. Damaged plant parts exude a white latex. The white flowers have longer corolla tubes than Acokanthera oppositifolia. The fruits and possibly other parts of Acokanthera oblongifolia are indeed very poisonous (Van Wyk and Van Wyk, 1997).
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