WART HOG was at Soweto Market to buy some wild fruits and came across masuku which also reminds wart hog that we are in the rainy season. Wart Hog saw a lot of people eating masuku. Masuku is a small evergreen tree with large, brittle, ovate to obviate leaves.
Leaves often distinctly curled over from the midrib in the shape of a saddle. Flowers are mostly unisexual; fruits orange yellow.
The fruits are eaten both by children and adults.  These are used to make products like sweetmeats and jam.
As this fruit is quite popular with local people, there is ample scope for domestication of masuku.  It can be used in agro forestry, around homes and boundaries. It is left standing on cleared land.
Masuku is a very hardy plant and can tolerate even shallow or gravelly soils.  It can be propagated by seed, cuttings or root suckers.
Flowers of masuku make very good honey.  The wood is fairly durable, straight-grained with white sap wood and red-brown figured heartwood.
It is termite resistant.  It is used to make furniture, for domestic uses such as spoons, and as timber. Charcoal from this tree is highly regarded and many trees are cut for this purpose. It is also used for firewood in areas where the demand for charcoal is low.  The root is used to treat indigestion.
Bemba (musuku); Chichewa (msuka); English (wild loquat); Lozi (musuku, chilundu, muhaka); Lunda (kabofa); Ndebele (muzanje, umhobohobo); Chinyanja (mpotopoto, msuku); Shona muzhanje, umhobohobo); Swahili (nkusu,mkusu); Trade name (masuku).
Uapaca kirkiana is a small to medium-sized evergreen or semi-deciduous tree with spreading multiple branches forming a dense rounded crown.
The trunk is short and stout, attaining a height of 5-12 m and diameter of 5-25 cm. The bark is dark grey or grey-brown, thick and deeply fissured. Branchlets are short, thick with prominent leaf scars. The young shoots are covered with creamy-brown hairs.
Leaves are simple and alternately arranged in clusters concentrated at the end of branchlets, 7-36 x 4-24 cm, secondary nerves parallel and quite prominent beneath, in 12-16 pairs. The young leaves are covered with curly hairs on the undersurface.
Flower buds globose, flowers pale yellow, borne in short slender asicular and axillary peduncles. The male flowers are in dense clusters, the female flowers solitary; male and female flowers borne on different trees.
Fruit is round, skin tough, yellow-brown, up to 3.3 cm in diameter, the flesh yellowish, edible and sweet tasting with a pear-like flavour. Fruit contains 3-4 seeds.
Flowering occurs at the peak of the rainy season. Trees can remain in flower for several months. The species is dioecious and therefore outcrossing. Only casual mentions indicate either insects or specifically bees and wind as possible pollination vectors.
Fruit development, a five to eight month process, commences in the rainy season but extends through the dry season into the next rainy season.
It is widely claimed that kirkiana is animal dispersed, the sugary pulp, which forms 40-60 percent of the fresh fruit, making it attractive to a wide range of mammals and birds. The genus is stable, with a chromosome number (2n=26) and devoid of polyploidy.
Wild loquats are rich in pectin, a type of fiber extremely potent for burning fat, balancing blood sugar, stabilising blood pressure, controlling cholesterol, and eliminating harmful blood fats known as triglycerides.
Pectin also promotes colon health thereby preventing or easing constipation and fighting against colon cancer.  The presence of pectin makes wild loquats an extremely powerful detox and blood purifying tool; pectin has the ability to prevent toxicity from drugs, remove heavy metals like lead from the blood, and generally cleanse blood.
Like other unprocessed plant foods, wild loquats are rich in phyto-nutrients which are compounds that give plant foods their color, taste, smell, texture, and other distinctive features.
Phyto-nutrients are believed to be among the key aspects that make unprocessed plant foods healthy and effective for fighting a wide range of diseases including cancer, diabetes, and arthritis.
Wild loquats have a class of phyto-nutrients known as flavonoids, tied by various studies to low death rates, low incidence of heart disease, and decreased prevalence of cancer.
Other nutrients present in wild loquats include potassium, B vitamins,manganese, copper, iron, and vitamin A.
Potassium is essential for maintaining a healthy heart rhythm and facilitating general body movements while vitamin A ensures healthy vision.
Copper and iron are used for producing red blood cells and boosting blood oxygen levels.  Foods high in manganese promote strong and healthy bones, improve nerve function, and encourage reproductive health.
The body uses B vitamins for production of energy, maintaining brain function, formation of red blood cells, and other important roles The possibility that wild loquats are healthy to a much greater extent than we are aware is very high.
Information on nutrients unique to wild loquats or other indigenous wild fruits is rather scanty because very few studies focus on such foods.  Most known nutrients in wild loquats are those shared among loquats and other fruits in general.