Botanical atlas

Cheesewood

Pittosporum viridiflorum

Long before it found its way into ornamental gardens, cheesewood held a steady place in the traditional medicine of southern Africa, where healers turned to its bark and leaves for fevers, chest complaints, and stubborn colds. The bark, stripped in strips from older branches, was simmered into decoctions used as a general tonic and wash for wounds. It earned its common name from the pale, close-grained timber beneath the bark, which early settlers found cut cleanly and evenly, almost like a wheel of cheese, and prized for tool handles and yokes. Today the tree is better known as a hardy, glossy-leaved addition to gardens and hedgerows, its old reputation as a healing bark now mostly a quiet footnote in ethnobotanical records.

In tradition.

Long before it found its way into ornamental gardens, cheesewood held a steady place in the traditional medicine of southern Africa, where healers turned to its bark and leaves for fevers, chest complaints, and stubborn colds. The bark, stripped in strips from older branches, was simmered into decoctions used as a general tonic and wash for wounds. It earned its common name from the pale, close-grained timber beneath the bark, which early settlers found cut cleanly and evenly, almost like a wheel of cheese, and prized for tool handles and yokes. Today the tree is better known as a hardy, glossy-leaved addition to gardens and hedgerows, its old reputation as a healing bark now mostly a quiet footnote in ethnobotanical records.

Safety.

Cheesewood hasn't been well studied and lacks reliable safety information for internal use, so it's best avoided as a home remedy, especially during pregnancy or by children.