Searsia incisa var. incisa

These flowers of Searsia incisa were photographed at Worcester in August. The pendulous panicles of yellow flowers are hairy, although this is not quite evident in the photo. Some plant species produce many flowers, but lose a lot that do not reach the fruit and seed forming stages, dropping off early for climatic and other reasons.

Searsia species are often noted for a good conversion rate of flowers into fruits. This renders the edible, but tiny fruits still worth eating to people. While birds will take the fruits one by one and soon have ingested enough, people can grab a whole cluster of fruits at a time from the tree and rub them between the hands for cleaning and eating. 

The leaves resemble those of a well known oak tree (Coates Palgrave, 2002; Van Wyk and Van Wyk, 1997).