Antiaris toxicaria is a tree in the mulberry and fig family, Moraceae. It is the only species currently recognized in the genus Antiaris. The genus Antiaris was at one time considered to consist of several species, but is now regarded as just one variable species which can be further divided into five subspecies. One significant difference within the species is that the size of the fruit decreases as one travels from Africa to Polynesia.[4]Antiaris has a remarkably wide distribution in tropical regions, occurring in Australia, tropical Asia, tropical Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines, Tonga, and various other tropical islands. Its seeds are spread by various birds and bats, and it is not clear how many of the populations are essentially invasive. The species is of interest as a source of wood, bark cloth, and pharmacological or toxic substances.
The generic epithet Antiaris is derived directly from the Javanese name for it: ancar[5] (obsolete Dutch-era spelling: antjar).[6] Some of the better known synonyms include: Antiaris africana, Antiaris macrophylla and Antiaris welwitschii.
Antiaris toxicaria leaves on twigCoppice, showing young bark
In English it may be called bark cloth tree, antiaris, false iroko, false mvule or upas tree,[7] and in the Javanese language it is known as the upas (meaning 'poison' in Javanese) or ancar. In the Indonesian language it is known as bemu. In the related official language of the Philippines, Filipino, upas, and in Malaysia's Malaysian language as Ipoh or ancar. In Thai it is the ยางน่อง (yangnong). In Mandinka, it is the jafo and in Wolof the kan or man. In Coastal Kenya, it is called mnguonguo by the Giriama.
The Chinese of Hainan Island, refer to the tree as the "Poison Arrow Tree" (Chinese:箭毒木; pinyin:Jiàndú Mù — "Arrow Poison Wood,") because its latex was smeared on arrowheads in ancient times by the Li people for use in hunting and warfare.[8]
Taxonomy
Currently one species of Antiaris is formally accepted, namely Antiaris toxicaria,[9][10][4] with about twenty synonyms recorded and rejected as invalid. The status of other species still is unresolved, namely Antiaris turbinifera. However, given the wide range of the genus, it is quite likely that investigations under way will lead to the establishment of new species. Some varieties and subspecies are already established, pending further investigation. At present the accepted taxonomy is as follows:[3]
Antiaris toxicariaLesch.
Antiaris toxicaria var. africana Scott Elliot ex A.Chev. (synonymsAntiaris africanaEngl., A. challa(Schweinf.) Engl., A. kerstingiiEngl., A. toxicaria subsp. africana(Engl.) C.C.Berg, and Ficus challaSchweinf.)
Antiaris toxicaria subsp. macrophylla (R.Br.) C.C.Berg (synonyms Antiaris macrophyllaR.Br., A. toxicaria var. macrophylla(R.Br.) Corner, Antiaris bennettiiSeem., Ipo bennettiiKuntze, I. innoxiaKuntze, and I. macrophyllaKuntze)
Antiaris toxicaria subsp. toxicaria (synonyms Antiaris dubiaSpan. ex Hook., A. innoxiaBlume, A. palembanicaMiq., A. rufaMiq., A. saccidoraDalzell, A. zeylanicaSeem., Ipo palembanicum(Miq.) Kuntze, I. rufaKuntze, I. saccidora(Dalzell) A.Lyons, Lepurandra saccidoraNimmo, and Toxicaria macassariensisAepnel. ex Steud.)
Antiaris toxicaria var. usambarensis (Engl.) C.C.Berg (synonym Antiaris usambarensisEngl.)
Antiaris toxicaria subsp. welwitschii (Engl.) C.C.Berg (synonyms Antiaris toxicaria var. welwitschii(Engl.) Corner and A. welwitschiiEngl.)
Antiaris toxicaria is monoecious. It is a large tree, growing to 25–40 m tall, with a trunk up to 40cm diameter, often buttressed at the base, with pale grey bark. The trees have milky to watery latex.[11] The leaves are elliptic to obovate, 7–19cm long and 3–6cm broad.[12] The African tree bears larger fruit than Asian and Polynesian populations. The Indonesian Antiaris toxicaria flowers in June. In Kenya peak seeding time is March. The edible fruit is a red or purple drupe 2cm in diameter, with a single seed.[11] The tree grows rapidly and attains maturity within 20 years. It is classified by Hawthorne W.D. as a non-pioneer light demanding tree.[13]
Distribution
The Antiaris tree is found in grassy savanna and coastal plateaus. In Africa, there are three varieties clearly distinguished by habitat and their juvenile forms. One is confined mainly to wooded grassland, the other two are found in wet forests; rainforest, riverine forest and semi-swamp forests.[citation needed] It generally does not grow above 1500 metres elevation.[14]
Uses
Antiaris toxicaria is a fairly small-scale source of timber and yields a lightweight hardwood with density of 250–540 kilogram per cubic metre (similar to balsa). As the wood peels very easily and evenly, it is commonly used for veneer.
The bark has a high concentration of tannins that are used in traditional clothes dyeing and paints.
The seed from the fruit, which is a soft and edible[15] red or purple drupe 2cm in diameter, is dispersed by birds, bats, possums, monkeys, deer, antelopes and humans.
In Africa and Polynesia the bast fibre is harvested and is used in preparing strong, coarse bark cloth for clothing. The clothes often are decorated with the dye produced from the bark tannins.
Antiaris toxicaria is an excellent, fast-growing shade tree and often is grown around human dwellings for shade. The leaf litter is an excellent compost material and high in nutrients. It often is applied as mulch or green manure in local gardens, which however, must be grown beyond the shade of the extremely dense canopy of the tree.
Recently, the plant had allegedly been used by retired Tanzanian pastor Ambilikile Mwasapile to allegedly cure all manner of diseases, including HIV/AIDS, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, asthma, and others.[16] While found to be harmless to humans when boiled in accordance with Mwasapile's mode of creating a medicinal drink out of the bark, it allegedly was undergoing testing by the WHO and Tanzanian health authorities to verify whether it has any medicinal value.[17] However, conflicting reports suggest that the plant in question is not in fact Antiaris, but rather Carissa edulis.[18][needs update]
The latex of Antiaris toxicaria contains intensely toxic cardenolides, in particular a cardiac glycoside named antiarin.[19] It is used as a toxin for arrows, darts, and blowdarts in Island Southeast Asian cultures. In various ethnic groups of the Philippines, Borneo, Sulawesi and Malaysia the concentrated sap of Antiaris toxicaria is known as upas, apo, or ipoh, among other names. The concentrate is applied (by dipping) to darts used in sumpit blowguns employed for hunting and warfare.[20][21] In Javanese tradition in Indonesia, Antiaris toxicaria (also known as upas) is mixed with Strychnos ignatii for arrow poison.[14]
In China, this plant is known as "arrow poison wood" and the poison is said to be so deadly that it has been described as "Seven Up Eight Down Nine Death" meaning that a victim can take no more than seven steps uphill, eight steps downhill or nine steps on level ground before dying. Some travellers' tales have it that the Upas tree is the most poisonous in the world, so that no one can reach the trunk before falling down dead.[22]
Upas Tree from an 1887 illustration
Another account (professedly by one Foersch, who was a surgeon at Semarang in 1773) was published in The London Magazine, December 1783, and popularized by Erasmus Darwin in Loves of the Plants (Botanic Garden, pt. ii). The tree was said to destroy all animal life within a radius of 15 miles or more. The poison was fetched by condemned malefactors, of whom scarcely two out of twenty returned.[23]Geoffrey Grigson proposed that this exaggerated description was perpetrated by George Steevens.[24] In fact, the deaths were due to an adjoining extinct volcano near Batar, called Guava Upas. Due to confusion of names, the poisonous effects of the deadly valley have been ascribed to the Upas tree.[25]
Literary allusions to the tree's poisonous nature are frequent and as a rule are not to be taken seriously.[26][27] A poem that has been frequently commented on and set to music is "The Upas-Tree" by Pushkin.[28]
One of the heroes of Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain written in 1924 mentioned this tree in the context "The knowledge of drugs possessed by the coloured races was far superior to our own. In certain islands east of Dutch New Guinea, youths and maidens prepared a love charm from the bark of a tree—it was probably poisonous, like the hippomane manzanilla, or the antiaris toxicaria the deadly upas tree of Java, which could poison the air round with its steam and fatally stupefy man and beast".
Literature
Berg, C.C., 1977. Revisions of African Moraceae (excluding Dorstenia, Ficus, Musanga and Myrianthus). Bulletin du Jardin Botanique National de Belgique, 47: 267–407.
Bisset, N.G., 1962. Cardiac glycosides: Part VI. Moraceae: The genus Antiaris Lesch. Planta Medica, 10: 143–151.
Boer, E. & Sosef, M.S.M., 1998. Antiaris Lesch. In: Sosef, M.S.M., Hong, L.T. & Prawirohatmodjo, S. (Editors): Plant Resources of South-East Asia,5(3). Timber trees: Lesser-known timbers. Backhuys Publishers, Leiden, the Netherlands. pp.73–75.
Browne, F.G., 1955. Forest trees of Sarawak and Brunei and their products. Government Printing Office, Kuching, Malaysia. pp.348–349.
Burkill, I.H., 1966. A dictionary of the economic products of the Malay Peninsula. Revised reprint volume 1 (A-H). Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. pp.175–185.
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, 1948. The wealth of India: a dictionary of Indian raw materials & industrial products. Volume 1. Publications and Information Directorate, New Delhi, India. pp.83–84.
Dolder, F., Tamm, C. & Reichstein, T., 1955. Die Glykoside von Antiaris toxicaria Lesch. Glykoside und Aglycone, 150 [Glycosides of Antiaris toxicaria Lesch. Glycoside and aglycones, 150]. Helvetica Chimica Acta, 38(6): 1364–1396.
Hano, Y., Mitsui, P. & Nomura, T., 1990. Seven prenylphenols, antiarones C, D, E, F, G, H and I from the root bark of Antiaris toxicaria Lesch. Heterocycles 31(7): 1315–1324.
Pételot, A., 1954. Les plantes médicinales du Cambodge, du Laos et du Vietnam. [The medicinal plants of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam]. Vol. 3. Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques et Techniques, Saigon, Vietnam. pp.126–127.
Quisumbing, E., 1978. Medicinal plants of the Philippines. Katha Publishing Co., Quezon City, the Philippines. pp.224–226.
↑ "Archived copy". www.worldagroforestry.org. Archived from the original on 9 April 2018. Retrieved 13 January 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
↑ Hawthorne, W.D. (1995). Ecological profiles of Ghanaian forest trees. Oxford: Oxford Forestry Institute, Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford. p.46.
1 2 Timber trees: lesser known species Sosef MSM, Hong LT, Prawirohatmodjo S. (eds.) PROSEA 5(3). Backhuys Publishers, Leiden: 1998
↑ Berg, C.C.; Corner, E.J.H.; Jarrett, F.M. (2006). Flora Malesiana. Series I, Seed plants. Volume 17, Part 1: Moraceae - genera other than Ficus. Leiden, Netherlands: Nationaal Herbarium Nederland. p.18.
↑ Kopp, B; Bauer, WP; Bernkop-Schnurch, A (1992). "Analysis of some Malaysian dart poisons". Journal of Ethnopharmacology. 36 (1): 57–62. doi:10.1016/0378-8741(92)90061-u. PMID1501494.
↑ Marinas, Amante P. Sr. (17 April 2012). Blowgun Techniques: The Definitive Guide to Modern and Traditional Blowgun Techniques. Tuttle Publishing. ISBN978-1-4629-0554-6.
↑ Staff (1844). "The Upas". The Student: A Magazine of Theology, Literature, and Science. 1 (B). London: James Gilbert: 37–40. Retrieved December 1, 2013.
The Moraceae—often called the mulberry family or fig family—are a family of flowering plants comprising about 38 genera and over 1100 species. Most are widespread in tropical and subtropical regions, less so in temperate climates; however, their distribution is cosmopolitan overall. The only synapomorphy within the Moraceae is presence of laticifers and milky sap in all parenchymatous tissues, but generally useful field characters include two carpels sometimes with one reduced, compound inconspicuous flowers, and compound fruits. The family includes well-known plants such as the fig, banyan, breadfruit, jackfruit, mulberry, and Osage orange. The 'flowers' of Moraceae are often pseudanthia.
Adenia is a genus of flowering plants in the passionflower family Passifloraceae. It is distributed in the Old World tropics and subtropics. The centers of diversity are in Madagascar, eastern and western tropical Africa, and Southeast Asia. The genus name Adenia comes from "aden", reported as the Arabic name for the plant by Peter Forsskål, the author of the genus.
Arrow poisons are used to poison arrow heads or darts for the purposes of hunting and warfare. They have been used by indigenous peoples worldwide and are still in use in areas of South America, Africa and Asia. Notable examples are the poisons secreted from the skin of the poison dart frog, and curare, a general term for a range of plant-derived arrow poisons used by the indigenous peoples of South America.
Acokanthera schimperi, arrow poison tree, belonging to the family Apocynaceae, is a small tree native to eastern and central Africa as well as to Yemen.
Naucleopsis is a plant genus in family Moraceae.
Perebea is a genus of plant in family Moraceae.
Pseudolmedia is a flowering plant genus in the mulberry family (Moraceae). Species are found in southern Mexico, the Caribbean, and Meso- and South America. They are known in Latin America as lechechiva and used for timber, construction wood, and sometimes in folk medicine.
Ficus americana, commonly known as the West Indian laurel fig or Jamaican cherry fig, is a tree in the family Moraceae which is native to the Caribbean, Mexico in the north, through Central and South America south to southern Brazil. It is an introduced species in Florida, USA. The species is variable; the five recognised subspecies were previously placed in a large number of other species.
Antiarins are cardiac glycoside poisons produced by the upas tree. There are two closely related forms, α-antiarin and β-antiarin. The two share the same aglycone, antiarigenin, but differ in the sugar group that is attached to it.
Ficus deltoidea, commonly known as mistletoe fig is a species of flowering plant in the family Moraceae, native to Southeast Asia, and widely naturalized in other parts of the world.
Treculia is a genus of trees in the plant family Moraceae that is native to west and central Africa and Madagascar. The best-known member of the genus, Treculia africana, commonly known as the African breadfruit, is used as a food plant.
The Ficus sansibarica, known as knobbly fig, is an African species of cauliflorous fig. It is named after Zanzibar, where Franz Stuhlmann discovered it in 1889. They often begin life as epiphytes, which assume a strangling habit as they develop. They regularly reach 10 m, but may grow up to 40 m tall as forest stranglers.
Ficus nervosa is a tree in the family Moraceae which grows up to a height of 35 metres. It is native to southern China, Taiwan and tropical Asia. The tree is grown in coffee plantations for shade.
Ficus vasta is a fig plant found in Ethiopia and Yemen. The tree is a species of sycamore-fig.
''Ficus cyathistipula'', the African fig tree, is a species of fig that is native to the tropical forest regions of Africa. They may be small trees, shrubs or hemi-epiphytic lianas, and are widespread in the moist tropics, where they may be found in Afromontane or rainforest, often overhanging pools. The figs are reddish when ripe, and have thick, spongy walls that enable them to float on water. They are named for their cup-shaped (cyathus-) and persistent stipules (stipula).
Sumpit and sumpitan are general terms for blowguns, usually tipped with iron spearheads, used for hunting and warfare in the islands of the Philippines, Borneo, and Sulawesi. They were also known as zarbatana by the Spanish.
Annickia affinis is small to medium sized tree that grows up to 30m tall, it belongs to the Annonaceae family. Also known as the African yellow wood, it is widely used in Central Africa and parts of West Africa in the treatment of various diseases. Both Annickia affinis and Annickia chlorantha are widely studied and sometimes credited with the name Enantia chrlorantha.
Ficus tremula is an hemi-epiphytic species within the family Moraceae. It is pollinated by the fig wasp, Courtella wardi.
Hot and cold soaking treatment of twenty wood species from Irian Jaya,Abdurrohim S and Martawijaya A. Jurnal Penelitian Hasil Hutan Indonesia: 1987. 4(3): 1–9.
Flora of West Tropical Africa. Hutchinson J and Dalziel JM. Crown Agents for Overseas Governments and Administration: London 1958. 2nd Ed., Vol. 1(2), .
Analysis of some Malaysian dart poisons, Kopp B, Bauer WP and Bernkop-Schnurch A, Journal of Ethnopharmacology: . 1992. 36(1): 57–62.
Timber trees: lesser known species Sosef MSM, Hong LT, Prawirohatmodjo S. (eds.) PROSEA 5(3). Backhuys Publishers, Leiden: 1998
A pocket directory of trees and seeds in Kenya, Teel W. KENGO, Nairobi: 1984
Studies on the Indonesian Antiaris Toxicaria Sap, Fujimoto Yukio, Suzuki Yuko, Kanaiwa Takao, Amiya Takashi, Hoshi Katsuji, Fujino Sumiko, "Journal of pharmacobio-dynamics", 6 (2), The Pharmaceutical Society of Japan: 19830200: pp 128–135
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