Botanical atlas

Hairy Rubber Vine

Carpodinus hirsuta

Across the river-banks and gallery forests of West Africa, from Senegal to Cameroon, this vigorous climbing liana has long been part of daily forest life. Its round, fist-sized fruits, sweet and slightly tart, were gathered and eaten fresh by local communities and forest wildlife alike, a familiar bush snack rather than a cultivated crop. In the early twentieth century, its latex became genuinely valuable, tapped and processed into the rubber pastes that were once shipped from Ghanaian and Nigerian ports before the plant world's rubber trade shifted elsewhere. Traditional healers in the region are also recorded as using the bark and root in folk preparations for coughs and other ailments, knowledge that remains part of local ethnobotany even though it has never entered mainstream Western herbalism.

In tradition.

Across the river-banks and gallery forests of West Africa, from Senegal to Cameroon, this vigorous climbing liana has long been part of daily forest life. Its round, fist-sized fruits, sweet and slightly tart, were gathered and eaten fresh by local communities and forest wildlife alike, a familiar bush snack rather than a cultivated crop. In the early twentieth century, its latex became genuinely valuable, tapped and processed into the rubber pastes that were once shipped from Ghanaian and Nigerian ports before the plant world's rubber trade shifted elsewhere. Traditional healers in the region are also recorded as using the bark and root in folk preparations for coughs and other ailments, knowledge that remains part of local ethnobotany even though it has never entered mainstream Western herbalism.

Safety.

This vine's latex can irritate skin and eyes on contact. Only the ripe fruit pulp is a traditional food; the bark and root have not been studied for safe use and should not be self-prepared.