The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Chiococca alba
Also called Amadesiac, Buck Root, Buckroot Amadesiac, David's Milkberry, David's Root, Davisroot, Kakanga Root
West Indian milkberry is an evergreen woody vine or scrambling shrub native to tropical and subtropical America, known for its glossy foliage and white berries. It is grown mainly as an ornamental on trellises or espalier in frost-free climates.
Chiococca alba is a species of flowering plant in the coffee family (Rubiaceae) native to Florida and the extreme southern tip of Texas in the United States, Bermuda, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, the Galápagos, and tropical South America. Common names include David's milkberry, West Indian milkberry, cahinca and West Indian snowberry. The specific epithet, alba, means "white" in Latin and refers to the color of its fruits.
Chiococca alba is sometimes cultivated as an ornamental for its dark green, evergreen foliage and white drupes. It is used in espalier and grown on trellises. The roots have several uses in herbal medicine, including as a laxative, diuretic, emetic, and antidiarrhoeal. The plant was sold commercially in Europe and the United States for those purposes at one time.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Chiococca alba 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.
