Ceratotheca sesamoides
Pedaliaceae FAMILY

Ceratotheca sesamoides

Ceratotheca sesamoides

Edibility
3/5
Medicinal
2/5

Safety & Hazards

None known

Cultivation Details

HabitAnnual
Growth—

Requires a sunny position[1]. Prefers a well-drained, sandy soil in the wild[1]. Established plants are drought tolerant[1]. The regular removal of young shoots permits sustained vegetative growth and flowering, prolonging the productive period of the plant[1]. The plant is covered with mucilage glands. These glands may enable the plant to withstand severe desiccation without tissue death; after contact with water, the outer cell walls of the head cells dissolve, producing an enormous amount of mucilage[1].

Propagation

Seed - sow in situ. Germination percentages are usually low[2]. Cite as: Tropical Plants Database, Ken Fern. tropical.theferns.info. 2026-02-20. <tropical.theferns.info/viewtropical.php?id=Ceratotheca+sesamoides>

Pollinators

Self

References

  1. [1]Protabase - Plant Resources of Tropical Africa. — http://www.prota.org ↩︎An excellent on-line database with detailed information on over 3,200 species of useful plants of Africa.
  2. [2]Traditional Vegetables in Benin — Achigan-Dako E. Et al · Darwin Initiative; International Foundation for Science · 2009 ↩︎Issued as a PDF on the Internet, it contains basic information on over 250 species of plants used for food in Benin.
  3. [3]Edible Wild Plants of Tanzania — Ruffo, C.K.: Birnie, A. & Tengnas, B. · Regional Land Management Unit; Nairobi. · 2002 · ISBN 9966-896-60-0 ↩︎A very well presented, simple guide to growing and utilizing wild food plants in Tanzania, with line drawings of each plant, a description, habitat and range, non-food as well as food uses, plus basic information on growing the plants.
  4. [4]Dictionary of Economic Plants. — Uphof. J. C. Th. · Weinheim · 1959 · ISBN - ↩︎An excellent and very comprehensive guide but it only gives very short descriptions of the uses without any details of how to utilize the plants. Not for the casual reader.
  5. [5]Flora Zambesiaca — http://apps.kew.org/efloras/fz/intro.html ↩︎An excellent online flora of plants from the Zambezi River basin. It lists a number of the plant uses as well as the habitats and botanical descriptions of the plants.
  6. [6]Cornucopia II — Facciola. S. · Kampong Publications, California. · 1998 · ISBN 0-9628087-2-5 ↩︎The second edition of an excellent guide to the edible uses of plants, though it does not give any details of cultivation etc.