Concrete Milk from fruits - Specimen details
| Catalogue Number: 50053 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No Image | Plant Name | 106.00 APOCYNACEAE Tabernaemontana usambarensis | Entry Book Number | 13.1900 | |
| Artefact Name | Concrete Milk from fruits | Vernacular Name | |||
| Iso Country | Tanzania | TDWG Region | Tanzania | ||
| Parts Held | Concrete Milk from fruits | Geography Description | Zanzibar | ||
| Uses | Concrete Milk from fruitsUse: User: | TDWG use | |||
| Storage | Bottles, boxes etc | Related Items | |||
| Donor | Donor No | ||||
| Donor Date | Donor Notes | ||||
| Collector | Lyne RH | Collector No | |||
| Collection Notes | Collection Date | ||||
| Exhibition | Expedition | ||||
| Number Components | Publication | ||||
| Notes: | Opuscular source: Letter (copy) addressed to Director (London, March 31st, 1900) I am sending you samples of the Gutta Percha together with specimens of the flowers and leaves of the tree to which I referred in my letter of last week. I hope the case con, taining specimens of the fruit will have reached you from the Docks. The tree is growing in a small piece of native forest on the experimental plantation, Disorga?, Zanzibar. It has a rough bark grows to a ht of 40 ft, and 2 ft round the stem. It belon, gs apparently to the natural order Apocynaceae and bears fruit freely all the year round. The natives call it Mwango and Mappumbukina and they use the roots, dipped in boiled cocoanut as a remedy for itch. 35 trees are growing in the Dunga coppice which, is less than an acre in extent. This small coppice had been left by the natives as a grave yard, and I have little doubt from the existence of these patches scattered about, that the land both in Zanzibar and Pemba which is now under Arab and native cult, ivation was at one time forest. The prob are therefore that the tree will be found distrributed through the forests at the North of Pemba and possibly also through those of the mainland. Latex flows both from the trunk and the fruit. The 3 lumps of Gut, ta I send you are all from the fruit. The latex lies just beneath the epidermis and is extracted by pricking the fruit all over with the point of a knife or a horse's curry comb. It is a rather thick consistency and has to be scraped off the smooth surf, ace. It coagulates after about 6 hours exposure to the air. This is how ball no 1 was produced. We afterwards washed the sticky latex off the fruit with water by which means the waste is much reduced and a much greater propartion of the milk coagulated, . The water is then poured into a pot kept simmering over a fire, the gutta separating out within a few minutes. This is a much more expeditious method and is how balls no 2 and 3 were produced. But you will observe that the quality of 2 & 3 which are, light and in parts friable, is inferior to that of no 1 which is dense and heavy. I infer from this that the coagulation of the latex should be allowed to proceed naturally and not hastened by the application of heat. No 1 was originally 2 lumps which I, moulded together by plunging them in hot water to make them plastic this accounts for the diff in the quality of the two hemispheres caused by the employment in one case of heat as explained above. No 1 weighs a little less than a pound and was collecte, d by 5 men and boys in one day from 125 fruits. We were however only experimenting and I had no time, before leaving for England to follow these experiments up. The latex from the trunk is much more watery than that from the fruit and did not coagulate,, after several days it solidified, upon evaporation of the moisture, into a white friable substance, a sample of which I send you a bottle. Ammonia, hydrochloric acid and heating had no effect upon it and I am unable to say whether any reagent would make, it plastic. We employed the usual method of herring boning the tree to extract the milk but used a blacksmiths paring knife for cutting the conduits. The reflex extremity of the knife forms a gouge which if drawn down the bark scoops out a channel in o, ne operation. The milk from both the stem and the fruit is caustic and causes great irritation to the quicks of the fingers, making them bleed. (Signed) R W Lyne | ||||
| Determinations: | 106.00 APOCYNACEAE Tabernaemontana usambarensis (K.Schum.) Stapf 106.00 APOCYNACEAE Conopharyngia usambarensis K.Schum. | ||||