Description

A climbing herb of secondary jungle, roadsides, waste places and disturbed land of hilly country from Guinea to W Cameroons, and extending into central tropical Africa.The plant has succulent leaves and stems which are eaten as a spinach, but there are several cultivars of superior quality grown as a leaf-vegetable in the Region and in the adjoining territories of its occurrence. A leaf-infusion is also taken as a drink (3, 4, 6–10, 12). In northern Sierra Leone the leaves are cooked in palaver sauce, the first cooking-water being discarded (5, 10). The use by the Krio of Sierra Leone of the Yoruba name for the plant (bologi) must raise a query whether the plant is truly native of as far west as Sierra Leone and Guinea for there seems to be a break in its distribution between Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast. Furthermore the Kissi of Sierra Leone infer an exotic origin in calling it ‘English spinach.’ It is the true bọlọgi of the Yorubas, Basella alba being ‘broad bọlọgi’ and Talinum ‘Lagos bọlọgi.’The leaves are applied in Nigeria as a wound-dressing (4). In Ivory Coast the plant is pulped into a paste for application to the breasts as a galactogene and the sap is taken by draught for cough in children (2). A preparation is taken by the Igbo of S Nigeria for ‘hot belly’ (? indigestion) (11). In Congo the plant has a reputation as a cough-cure, for heart-troubles, and to be aperitive and tonic, and for these it is eaten as a vegetable with meat or fish. The sap is also rubbed on the body to relieve rheumatic pain, prurigenic allergies and localized oedemas (1).It has superstitious uses in Congo: to wash initiates at sect ceremonies, to assure rest to the spirit of a departed sect member, and by eating some of the leaves someone pleading before a tribunal will put forward a good case (1).