Serichoi specimen, Wamba, Kenya

Pronunciation: XXX
Botanical name: Boscia coriacea; Capparaceae family

Description: Pictured specimen collected in June, 2016, near Lengusaka, Kenya, at 1,500 meters. Habitat: savannah. “An evergreen shrub common in all the drier parts of eastern Africa. Found in deciduous bushland and semidesert scrub. Common in most arid coastal lowlands of northern and eastern Kenya, mainly in Acacia-Commiphora bushland, often in rocky areas, loose red clay or sandy soils.”

Uses: “Firewood, furniture, material for temporary structures (branches, stems), utensils (wooden spoons), arrowheads, edible fruit (pulp sucked by humans, eaten by birds, seed must be boiled before eating), medicine (bark, roots), fodder (leaves), bee forage, shade, toothbrushes, cleaning (disinfecting) milk gourds (calabashes), veterinary medicine.”

Source: Useful Trees and Shrubs for Kenya, Ed. Patrick Maundu and Bo Tengnas; Nairobi, Kenya: World Agroforestry Centre, 2005; https://apps.worldagroforestry.org/downloads/Publications/PDFS/B13601.pdf (accessed July 2024).

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This is the draft manuscript of the Samburu Milk Project, © 2024 William Rubel.

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Published by William Rubel

I am an author who writes about traditional food and foodways. My book, The Magic of Fire (2002) is about hearth cooking. I have written an introductory history of bread, Bread, a global history (2011) and am currently writing a history of bread for the University of California Press. Other areas of interest include wild mushrooms, and specifically the treatment of Amanita muscaria in the historic record. I also write about Early Modern British Gardens, and for a more general audience, I write for Mother Earth News on bread, gardening, and more. I have an ongoing research project into the smoke-cured fermented milk of the Kenyan Samburu tribe. I am a co-director of the Samburu Lowlands Research Station, Lengusaka. I am the founding editor (1972) of Stone Soup, the magazine of writing and art by young people.

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