Volume 1
Catalogue of the African plants collected by Dr. Friedrich Welwitsch in 1853-61.
- British Museum (Natural History) Department of Botany
- Date:
- 1896-1901
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Catalogue of the African plants collected by Dr. Friedrich Welwitsch in 1853-61. Source: Wellcome Collection.
125/392 page 93
![9a Greivia] the portions of forest which are richly clothed with trees, and on the margins of primitive woods; and they often occur in such abundance that they constitute dense thickets. Many species of Grewia are, on account of the great elasticity of their branches, used for traps and occasionally for archers’ bows; the elastic branches, especially those of G. pilosa Lam., are employed by the negroes for the lattice-gates of their huts as well as for the snares which are laid within their enclosures for catching birds and the smaller quadrupeds. The inner bark of nearly all the species supplies good ropes. The berries of some species are eaten by the negroes, who, however, when hungry will eat almost anything. The species of Grewia also furnish every- where good firewood; when in flower they are an ornament to the margins of the forests, and when in fruit they appear to supply a delicacy to bees. Some of the species of Triumfetta present themselves in such innumerable varieties and forms of transition that the limitation of the species, and still more so the even approximately correct arrangement or grouping of the varieties, becomes excessively difficult. On this account I have given, nearly in full, Welwitsch’s notes; and in the determination of the species I have generally followed Dr. Masters. Several, with the Bundo name “ Quibosa,” are very useful by the tenacity of the fibres which their stems and inner bark furnish, and ropes are manufactured from them. In the mountainous districts of the interior three or four species are designated by this name: for example, T. semitriloba, T. rhomboidea, T. orthacantha. (See Welw. Apont. p. 559 under n. 138, and Synopse, p. 43, n. 119.) The species of Corchorus are found principally in fields formerly cultivated and afterwards deserted, or as weeds among field-plants, and congregate in dense masses in the littoral regions around the sandy-loamy banks of the lakes, the artificial ponds (represas), and the smaller stagnant pools which after the rainy season occur everywhere, girt by a green border of herbaceous plants. Some species, especially C. olitorius L., are eaten by the negroes as a vegetable, a fact which, however, Welwitsch particularly observed only in Golungo Alto and by the river Luinha in the district of Cazengo. If it were possible to prove that C. olitorius L., a species which, as has been stated, occurs very frequently in Golungo Alto and is eaten there as a vegetable, is not indigenous but introduced, Welwitsch maintained that it could have been introduced only from Egypt, or at least from the North-east, but not from America, to which continent the majority of writers trace back all the plants of West Tropical Africa which are regarded as introductions. 1. GREWIA L.; Benth. & Hook. f. Gen. PL i. 233. L G. caffra Meisn. in Hook. Bond. Journ. Bot. ii. p, 53 (1843); Masters m Oliv. El. Trop. Afr. i. p. 244. Grevna (sp.), Welw. Apont. p. 559, under n. 138.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28120486_0001_0127.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
