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Strychnos icaja
Loganiaceae FAMILY

Strychnos icaja

Strychnos icaja

Edibility
0/5
Medicinal
2/5

Safety & Hazards

Various parts of Strychnos plants, especially the seeds and bark, contain toxic alkaloids such as strychnine and brucine. The fleshy pulp of the ripe fruits, however, is often edible[1]. A root or root bark infusion, or more rarely a stem bark extract, has been used as ordeal poison. Often roots of young plants were used, which seem to have a lower toxicity than those of mature plants[2]. The root bark is an ingredient in arrow poison[2]. Whole plants, root bark and fruits are used as a fish poison[2].

Cultivation Details

HabitClimber
Growth—

Strychnos acaja is unlikely to be frost tolerant. It grows in the moist tropics, where the mean annual temperature is within the range are 23 - 26°c, with rainfall all year round and where the inferred mean annual rainfall is in the range 1,350 - 2,500mm, exceptionally to 4,000mm[3].

Propagation

Seed - Suckers[2]. Cite as: Tropical Plants Database, Ken Fern. tropical.theferns.info. 2026-02-20. <tropical.theferns.info/viewtropical.php?id=Strychnos+icaja>

Pollinators

Data unavailable

References

  1. [1]Flora of Somalia — Thulin M. (Editor) · Kew Publishing, London. · 1993 ↩︎Detailed information on the plants of the region, often adding notes on the plants uses.
  2. [2]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.
  3. [3]Some Medicinal Forest Plants of Africa and Latin America — Various · FAO, Rome · 1986 · ISBN 92-5-102361-1 ↩︎Monographs of 40 medicinal plants. It can be downloaded from the internet
  4. [4]The Useful Plants of West Tropical Africa. — Burkil. H. M. · Royal Botanic Gardens; Kew. · 1985 - 2004 ↩︎Brief descriptions and details of the uses of over 4,000 plants. A superb, if terse, resource, it is also available electronically on the Web - see http://www.aluka.org/
  5. [5]Loganiaceae — Leeuwenberg A.J.M. & Bamps P. · Meise, Jardin botanique national de Belgique · 1979 · http://10.5281/zenodo.4569937 ↩︎This publication, along with many other from the Flore d’Afrique centrale, has been made available as a PDF document under a Creative Commons - Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share Alike 4.0 International licence (CC-BY-NC-SA)
  6. [6]Perennial Edible Fruits of the Tropics : an Inventory — Martin, F. W.; Campbell, C. W.; Rubertbe, R. M. · U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service · 1987 ↩︎A booklet giving terse details of almost 300 species of edible fruits, plus regional lists of Botanical and Common names for over 2,500 less well-known edible fruits of the tropics.