HERBS VERTIBÓ 13 - PRUNUS AFRICANA

Container with about 100g.

Botanical description:
Prunus africana, or Red Stinkwood (see the names, below, for more), is an evergreen tree native to the montane regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Islands of Madagascar, Sao Tome, Fernando Po and Grande Comore at about 900-3400 m. of altitude. The mature tree is 10-25 m. high, open-branched and often pendulous in forest, shorter and with a round crown of 10-20 m. diameter in grassland. It requires a moist climate, 900-3400 mm annual rainfall, and is moderately frost-tolerant.The bark is black to brown, corrugated or fissured and scaly, fissuring in a characteristic rectangular pattern. The leaves are alternate, simple, long (8-20 cm.), elliptic, bluntly or acutely pointed, glabrous and dark green above, pale green below, with mildly serrate margins. A central vein is depressed on top, prominent on the bottom. The 2-cm petiole is pink or red. The flowers are androgynous, 10-20 stamens, insect-pollinated, 3-8 cm., greenish white or buff, and are distributed in 70-mm axillary racemes. The plant flowers October through May. The fruit is red to brown, 7-13 mm., wider than long, two-lobed with a seed in each lobe. It grows in bunches ripening September through November, several months after pollination.

Applications and effect:
Traditionally used for fevers, malaria, wound dressing, arrow poison, stomach pain, purgative, kidney disease, appetite stimulant, gonorrhoea, and insanity.Prunus africana with stripped bark.An extract, pygeum, an herbal remedy prepared from the bark of Prunus africana, is used as an alternative medicine in patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) though clinical trials have not yet been conducted. It has shown positive results in in vitro studies and mouse models of prostate cancer

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