African Boxthorn
Dried Flower, Fruit Forming
African Boxthorn
Fruit, Still Green
| African Boxthorn Dried Flower, Fruit Forming | | African Boxthorn Fruit, Still Green | | ||
 | Class: | Plants (Plantae) - Land Plants (Charophyta) - Land Plants (Equisetopsida) | |||
| Order: | Potatoes (Solanales) | ||||
| Family: | Nightshade (Solanaceae) iNaturalist Observation | ||||
| Species: | African Boxthorn (Lycium ferocissimum) | ||||
| This Photo: | Fruit Further Developing | ||||
Thank you Andrew Allanson for identifying and Alan Dandie for confirming the id of this species for us General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere These are a declared noxious weed. Ooops. We thought we had the native. Our specimens generally looked very sparse and easy to mistake with the native (Lycium australe) As soon as we realised (yesterday, 5 March 2014), we cut & swabbed them. This situation highlights the need for web sites like ours: To help land owners & conservationists identify introduced species & eradicate them; giving natives more resources (nutrients/water/space) to grow. Which in turn gives native animals better things to eat & places to live in. Notice how natives always seem to be attacked by insects but introduced species aren't? Native insects depend on native plants to survive as they don't recognise introduced plants as useful. Birds & lizards thrive on insects. Ergo; less weeds = more birds & lizards. We've heard that if all the insects died today, man-kind would be extinct in 6 months! We've had one growing for some 10 years, but it never flowered. We thought it might be Sweet Bursaria (Bursaria spinosa ssp spinosa), waiting for it to flower, but it never did. Finally in April 2022 it flowered, nearly 10 years after we discovered it and it was a typical African Boxthorn flower. It's now been removed. | |||||
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