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.
Monodora myristica
Also called African Nutmeg, Jamaica Nutmeg, False Nutmeg
Calabash nutmeg is a tropical evergreen tree from West and Central Africa, valued for its seeds as a nutmeg substitute and grown for its large, orchid-like flowers. It needs warm, humid, frost-free conditions and is best suited to tropical gardens or greenhouses.
Monodora myristica, the calabash nutmeg or African nutmeg, is a tropical tree of the family Annonaceae or custard apple family of flowering plants. It is native to tropical Africa from Guinea Bissau in the west to Tanzania.
In former times, its seeds were widely sold as an inexpensive nutmeg substitute. This is now less common outside its region of production.
The calabash nutmeg tree grows naturally in evergreen forests from Liberia to Nigeria and Cameroon, Ghana, Angola and also Uganda and west Kenya. Due to the slave trade in the 18th century, the tree was introduced to the Caribbean islands where it was established and became known as Jamaican nutmeg. In 1897, Monodora myristica was introduced to Bogor Botanical Gardens, Indonesia, where the trees flower on a regular basis but no fruit could yet be collected. Due to its large and orchid-like flowers, the tree is also grown as an ornamental.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Monodora myristica 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.
