Plant · P-320

African Moringa

Moringa stenopetala

African moringa is a small deciduous tree grown for edible leaves, flowers, seedpods and young fruit, along with a seed oil used in soap and perfumery and seeds effective at clarifying drinking water. Its leaves are larger and milder-flavored than the more familiar Moringa oleifera. The catch is time: it needs roughly three years of uninterrupted frost-free growth before the first leaf harvest, so it only works as a planted tree in climates that never see a hard freeze.