Hoslundia opposita Vahl - Lamiaceae - uyaweyawe (Zulu), bird gooseberry, orange bird berry

Perennial herb or small shrub, native to Africa (Uganda to South Africa); leaves opposite, ovate to elliptic, with strong aroma when crushed; flowers white or creamy green; fruits orange-red, fleshy.
http://www.plantzafrica.com/planthij/hoslundop.htm

„The whole plant or various parts of it are used in traditional medicine as a purgative, diuretic, febrifuge, antiepileptic and antiseptic. The traditional uses of this species led to several biological investigations, indicating numerous properties of extracts from different parts of Hoslundia opposita namely antimicrobial, analgesic, antiinflammatory activities, antimalarial, antidiabetic and acaricidal activity… several published papers reported the isolation of non-volatile compounds consisting of 5,7-dimethyl-6-methylflavone, hoslundiol and four abietal type esters added to the pyrone and flavones were isolated more recently from the leaves…
Chemical investigation on leaves oil of Hoslundia opposita,… harvested from 20 localities of Côte d’Ivoire was realized by GC and GC/MS. In total, 101 compounds were identified accounting to 92% - 99%, aromatic compounds such benzyl benzoate and sesquiterpenes namely germacrene D, β-caryophyllene and α-humulene hydroxyl were found as the major constituents. As regard, the chemical profiles of our samples, it was found a great chemical variability suggesting a high polymorphism degree. In order to study this chemical variability, the results were submitted to the principal components and cluster analysis which allowed distinguishing two main groups of essential oils with respect to sampling site. The cluster I was dominated by benzyl benzoate (15%) and thymol (7.4%) comprising 6 localities, cluster II was characterized by phytol (8.5%) and α-humulene (7%) and constituted by 14 localities.“
[Intraspecific Chemical Variability of Essential Oil of Hoslundia opposita., Tonzibo, Z.F., Koffi, A.M., Wognin, E.L., Bedi, G., Chalchat, J.C., American Journal of Analytical Chemistry, Vol.4(02), 2013, 77-82]
http://file.scirp.org/Html/2-2200485_27798.htm

Photo: Günter Baumann, 2010, Malawi, (C) senkenberg.de