Uses.—The shrub is burnt round cattle, sheep and goat camps to keep off the flies and as a remedy for colds in such herds.
The leaves, concocted with water, are a medicine for internal complaints, a preventive of leprosy and, applied externally, a cure for skin irritations. They are also drunk by women after child-birth. The leaves are often added to food to prevent indigestion.
It is commonly cut for fencing farms against herds.
GYMNOSPORIA SENEGALENSIS Loes.—Kunkushewa, Namijin tsada, Mangaladi, Bakororo. CELASTRACEAE.
A shrub or small tree, occasionally as tall as 25 feet with a girth of 2 feet, but more generally a shrub found in large numbers in open secondary growth after cultivation. It does not grow in the far north and requires well-watered and more loamy soils than are found above 13° N. Sometimes it exceeds 50 per cent. of the vegetation on old farm lands, and such land being burnt every year the tree increases very slowly in height and broadens into a compact shrub. The crenate-edged leaves with bright red stalks, the small sharp thorns, small white flowers and globular fruits are distinctive characters.
The Bark of old trees is dark or light grey and covered with very small, close-fitting rectangular scales. That of the shrubs is pale-grey, sometimes almost white, and smooth. The slash is crimson.
The Thorns are in the axils of the leaves and in their axils is a bud. On the new shoots they are green with crimson bases, ¼-½ inch long, very sharp and straight. On old wood and twigs they are brown and very strong.
The Wood is whitish, hard, straight grained, sound and clean and weighs 45 lbs. a cubic foot. The rings are visible as extremely fine lines of alternate hard and soft tissue, the pores and rays both invisible except under good magnification. Planes and saws well but splits in seasoning.