Boophone disticha
Species of flowering plant
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Through Native species, Africa and Binomial nomenclature
Description
Boophone disticha is readily identified by its fan-like appearance of two tightly packed rows of about fifteen leaves in each row, and its up to 30 cm (12 in) diameter bulb half-protruding from the ground. It produces a single inflorescence, an umbel of about fifty pink, six-petaled flowers, before the arrival of the season's new leaves. While maturing the fruiting head's pedicels undergo a stiffening process and remarkable elongation to some 30 cm (12 in). When the fruiting head separates at its junction with the stalk, it forms a tumbleweed, easily moved by light breezes, scattering seeds as it rolls.
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Taxonomy
Boophone disticha was first collected from South Africa by Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg and described by Carl Linnaeus the Younger in 1782 as Amaryllis disticha. Since that time, it has been placed in the genera Brunsvigia and Haemanthus, finally coming to rest as Boophone. The genus name itself was spelled in three different ways (Boophone, Boophane and Buphane) by the author William Herbert, straining the procedures of the rules of nomenclature. The etymology of the genus is from the Greek bous = 'ox', and phontes = 'killer of', a clear warning that eating the plant can be fatal to livestock.
Distribution and habitat
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.
Uses
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.
It has been used locally to make an arrow poison and in the treatment of equine piroplasmosis.
The Khoi, Bushmen and Bantu were aware of its poisonous nature and used parts of the plant medicinally and as an arrow poison. The principal compounds are eugenol – an aromatic, volatile oil smelling of cloves and having analgesic properties, and the toxic alkaloids buphandrin, crinamidine and buphanine, the latter having an effect akin to that of scopolamine and if taken in quantity may lead to agitation, stupor, strong hallucinations and (if over-ingested) coma or death.
Material from this species' bulb was associated with preservation of the Khoi Kouga mummy found in the Langkloof.