Moepel in Pretoriuskop

Mimusops zeyheri, the Transvaal red milkwood or moepel, is a favourite evergreen tree in parks and gardens. The reasons include its dark green foliage that provide shade and screen concrete, as well as its tasty, yellow fruit.

This one growing among the bungalows in the Pretoriuskop Rest Camp is probably checked for ripe fruit by visitors in season, which is from about midautumn to midspring. That is if the many birds, monkeys and other resident mammals frequenting the Camp in spite of the fence don’t get them first. Notable moepel consumers include green pigeons and rameron pigeons among the birds and kudu and bushpig among the mammals.

The ovoid, fleshy fruit, the moepel, is a yellow to orange, plum-like berry. It is cupped by the persistent calyx, the sepal tips often veering away from the fruit that is tipped with dry remains of the style. The brittle-skinned fruit has yellow-orange pulp around the usually single, but sometimes up to four seeds of 2 cm long. The fruit itself becomes from 3 cm to 4,5 cm long. The pleasant-tasting to sweet flesh is mealy-textured (Coates Palgrave, 2002; Schmidt, et al, 2002; Van Wyk and Van Wyk, 1997; Pooley, 1993; Codd, 1951; iNaturalist).