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Boophone disticha
Also called Poison Bulb, Bushman Poison Bulb, Candelabra Flower, Cape Poison Bulb, Cape Poison, Cattle Killer, Century Plant
Boophone disticha is a bulbous African geophyte with a bulb half-exposed at soil level and a fan of leaves, producing a pink umbel of flowers before the new leaves appear. It is grown mainly as a specialist collector's bulb and needs sun, sharp drainage and a dry rest period.
Boophone disticha is a bulbous tropical and subtropical flowering plant, native to Africa. It is commonly called the century plant or tumbleweed. The bulb contains alkaloids with analgesic and hallucinogenic properties and has a wide range of uses in traditional African medicine, as well as being used to make an arrow poison.
Boophone disticha is native from south Sudan to South Africa. It is found in Angola, Botswana, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eswatini, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa (in the provinces of Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Western Cape), Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It grows wild in dry savannas, grasslands, and glades in forests.
The bulb of Boophone disticha has a wide range of uses in traditional African medicine. It contains alkaloids such as lycorine, undulatine, buphanisine, buphanamine, nerbowdine, crinine, crinamidine, distichamine, 3O-acetyl-nerbowdine, buphacetine and buphanidrine which have analgesic and hallucinogenic properties.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Boophone disticha by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
