A leafless parasitic herb with bright red-orange, pineapple-like flowering heads, growing directly on the roots of trees and shrubs.
Thonningia sanguinea (family Balanophoraceae) is a parasite that cannot make chlorophyll and lives entirely on the roots of trees and other woody plants. It forms a stout, long rhizome, swollen where it joins the host's root, and only its scaly, red flower heads, up to 7 cm tall, appear above ground. The rhizomes are often gathered from the wild as a flavouring and medicine and are commonly sold in northern Nigerian markets. The flowers are added to arrow poisons.
It grows across tropical Africa from Senegal to Ethiopia and south to Angola, Zambia and Tanzania, commonly in rainforest, gallery forest and nearby woodland and more rarely in savanna, up to 1,700 metres, on hosts that include the white star apple (Chrysophyllum albidum), Alstonia boonei (kongbade) and iroko (Milicia excelsa, leke). It can also parasitise plantation crops such as rubber, oil palm and cacao; infestation usually only weakens the host, but heavy infestation has killed rubber trees in Sierra Leone.
Source: Useful Tropical Plants database (Fern, K.).
The flowering heads and rhizome are used across West Africa to treat intestinal worms, diarrhoea, dysentery, venereal disease, sore throat, and skin infections.
An obligate root parasite of trees, unable to photosynthesize; not cultivated, found in forest and savanna wherever suitable host trees grow.