Gummy Canthium

lactescens: milky

Small tree with horizontal branches. Bark smooth, somewhat rough in older specimens, purplish-grey; bark and leaves exuding a gum-like sap when damaged. Leaves opposite, mostly at the ends of new shoots, ovate to broadly elliptic, 7-18 cm long, hairless or slightly velvet below. Stipules persistent and woody. Flowers in many-flowered heads on the old nodes, whitish to pale yellow, small, sweetly scented. Fruit 7-12 mm in diameter, squarish, distinctly 2-lobed, yellow to purple-brown when ripe, edible.

Angola, Burundi, DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.