A woody forest liana with milky latex, once a major commercial source of natural rubber in West Africa.
Landolphia owariensis (family Apocynaceae), the white rubber vine, grows as a shrub in the savanna but becomes a huge climber in forest, with stems up to 100 metres or more long and 30 cm thick at the base. Its fruit is commonly gathered from the wild and highly prized. Before rubber plantations took over the market, it was a very important source of vine rubber, exploited throughout its range and sometimes planted elsewhere in Africa; it fell almost entirely out of commercial use, apart from a brief revival as a substitute for plantation rubber during the Second World War. In the high forest of Nigeria and Cameroon, a skilled tapper could collect about 7.5 kg a month, at the cost of much dangerous tree climbing.
It is the commonest of the Landolphia species, growing from Guinea to Sudan and south to Uganda and southern Tanzania, as a shrub in savanna or a huge liana in secondary deciduous and dense forest. It survives bush fires: after a burn its rhizomes often send up short shoots that flower and fruit even before they turn woody. Seedlings stay short and bushy for the first couple of years before they start to climb, and the plant can also be grown from cuttings.
Source: Useful Tropical Plants database (Fern, K.).
Leaves and stems are used as an antimicrobial and vermifuge and to treat colic and inflammation; the latex is taken to expel intestinal worms.
The acidic ripe fruit is eaten fresh or fermented into a beverage.
A wild forest liana, harvested from the wild for both fruit and latex rather than cultivated.