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.
Oncoba spinosa
Also called Fried Egg Bush, Fried Egg Flower, Snuffbox Tree, Snuff Box Tree
Oncoba spinosa, the snuff-box tree, fried egg tree or fried-egg flower, is a plant species in the genus Oncoba traditionally placed in the family Flacourtiaceae, but now placed in the willow family, Salicaceae.
It is a small deciduous tree (usually no more than 5 m in height, but occasionally to 12 m (39 ft), that has simple leaves. The 9 cm (3.5 in) wide flowers have up to seventeen white petals and attractive with a yellow centre due to the stamens, resembling a fried egg. They appear on the tree from just before or around the time the new leaves are produced and the tree is in bloom for up to three months. The fruit is hard-shelled, globose and has a pointed tip. It measures up to 80 mm in diameter and is yellow to reddish-brown in colour. In southern Africa, it blooms from September to December.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Oncoba spinosa by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
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.
