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Psycotria capensis black bird-berry,
swartvoelbessie, iZele Article
by Geoff Nichols
Psychotria belongs to the coffee family and is a large shrub
of two to three metres in height to a smallish tree of four to five metres
that is found in the forests and bush clumps of the eastern parts of this
country. The leaves are fairly large about 100mm long and have a rounded look
to them. The midribs tend to be paler than the leaves. The leaves are shiny
and have a bright sort of look. Hope this makes sense to you. What I'm trying
to say is this plant has a fresh feel to it and never seems to dull the imagination.
It is a very adaptable plant growing in many varying conditions from deep
shade to full sun in very exposed places like on cliff edges in the teeth
of the wind and vulnerable to the teeth of dassies.
They produce, in spring, small yellow flowers in clusters at the ends of
the branches giving the plants a bright yellow appearance.
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Then
in the late summer the fruits begin to ripen changing from a green through
yellow to red when fully ripe. This is where I come back to my point of sitting
at my window. The birds that come to these berries are many and varied. However
the speckled mousebirds are my favourites with their clambering ways the bush
comes alive with the mouse-like antics of these birds picking off fruit to
eat. Other birds that I've noticed at my bird-berry are blackcollared barbets,
blackeyed and sombre bulbuls, blackbellied and redwinged starlings, purplecrested
louries and Cape white-eyes. In fact the most common plant that germinates
in my garden from the seed that birds drop is Psychotria capensis.
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There are many uses for this
plant as a specimen plant, hedge, shrubbery subject and as an indoor plant.
The last use is one is a good use as the young stems remain green and are
attractive with their upright growth and opposite branching habit they make
a very neat and well balanced plant in a pot/container. This is where my
point of the bright green leaves comes into play, they simply always brighten
up a dull office. Like many of the coffee family the leaves contain a cyanide
based compound that make them unpalatable to insects. But tell this to the
vervet monkeys in Burman Bush and your two golfcourses they still carry on
eating off all the young leaves leaving us with green stalks to admire.
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