Bushwillow

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

Moderate

As a honey crop

Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years

Which bees, and why

Small open flowers with accessible nectar, worked by African honey bees in large numbers and by the stingless bees kept in log hives across the region.

Worth knowing

A major and under-documented African honey source, second only to the acacias across much of the savannah belt.

Flowering

In flower

August to November (southern hemisphere)

Most species flower before or with the first rains, ahead of the main leaf flush.

When nectar flows

Free and generous across a genus that flowers heavily, and in many districts it is the flow that fills the boxes.

What it does to the honey

Gives a mid to dark amber honey with a warm caramel and dried-fruit character and a faint woody dryness.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun in seasonally dry tropical woodland on a wide range of soils.

Size

3-15 m depending on species.

Native range

Tropical and southern Africa, with related species in Asia and the Americas. A dominant component of many African woodland types.

Suits

Farm scale

• Not a garden plant outside Africa, and a genuine landscape component within it.
• Recorded at genus level because the honey is worked across several species that a beekeeper does not separate.

What it looks like

Small to medium trees with opposite leaves and dense spikes or heads of small greenish-cream flowers, followed by the distinctive four-winged papery fruits the genus is recognised by.