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 leaves are a popular food source for browsers such as duiker, kudu, impala, steenbok, nyala and elephant.

Common names: Natal orange, spiny orange, green monkey orange (English), Doringklapper (Afrikaans), Morapa (NS) umKwakwa (Swaziland), Nsala (Tswana), Mutamba (Shona), Maboque (Angola), Eguni (sing)/Maguni (pl) (Namibia), iHlala (isiZulu), Kikwakwa (Kiswahili), Massala (Mozambique Portuguese), Maku (Tiv), Fole (Guinea Bissau), Ichisongole (Zambia), Kankoroba, (Mali).