Prunus and Pliny uses "prūnus silvestris" to mean the blackthorn. The word is not native Latin, but is a loan from Greek προῦνον ("prounon"), which is a variant of προῦμνον ("proumnon"), origin unknown. The tree is προύμνη ("proumnē"). Most dictionaries follow Hoffman, "Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Griechischen", in making some form of the word a loan from a pre-Greek language of Asia Minor, related to Phrygian. The first use of "Prunus" as a genus name was by Carl Linnaeus in "Hortus Cliffortianus" of 1737, which went on to become "Species Plantarum". In that work, Linnaeus attributes the word to "Varr.", who it
Strychnos spinosa Strychnos spinosa Strychnos spinosa is a tree indigenous to tropical and subtropical Africa. It produces, sweet-sour, yellow fruits, containing numerous hard brown seeds. Greenish-white flowers grow in dense heads at the ends of branches (Sep-Feb/Spring - summer). The fruits tend to appear only after good rains. It is related to the deadly "Strychnos nux-vomica", which contains strychnine. The smooth, hard fruit are large and green, ripen to yellow colour. Inside the fruit are tightly packed seeds, which may be toxic, surrounded by a fleshy, brown, edible covering. Animals such as baboon, monkeys, bushpig, nyala and eland eat the fruit. The