A thorny shrub or small tree named for its curiously twisted, sickle-shaped seed pods and pink-and-yellow bicoloured flower spikes.
The sickle bush or marabou thorn (Dichrostachys cinerea, family Fabaceae) is a deciduous or semi-deciduous shrub or small tree with an open crown, 1 to 8 metres tall and occasionally 12 metres, covered in spines and often forming thickets by suckering. It is a true multi-purpose tree, giving food, medicine, fuel and other goods, and it is planted to stabilise and reclaim soil and as an ornamental for its pink-and-yellow lantern-like flowers. It is classed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (2011).
It grows in tropical Africa from Senegal to Somalia and south to Angola and Mozambique, and in Asia from India to Indonesia, usually on poor soils, in scrub, thickets, hedges and grassland up to 1,700 metres. It grows in strongly seasonal climates with 200 to 1,400 mm of rain a year and a dry season of four to ten months, from arid areas into the rainforest zone. It succeeds on clays, loams and sands, poor and saline soils, as long as they drain well, and it is very drought resistant. It has been spread widely by people and has become a noxious weed in Cuba. It spreads mainly by root suckers: in ten years one plant can produce 130 new stems within 15 metres. The seed stores very well, with little loss of viability over 26 years in sealed storage, but its thick coat slows germination unless scarified.
Source: Useful Tropical Plants database (Fern, K.).
Roots, bark, and leaves are used across Africa for stomach complaints, snakebite, scorpion sting, toothache, and asthma; the root is used as a local anaesthetic.
Foliage is a valued dry-season fodder, especially for goats.
Often left standing as a living fence; tolerant of poor, dry soils.