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Mediterranean buckthorn (Rhamnus alaternus)

Diputación de Málaga
Frutos del aladierno. Etapa 6. Gran Senda de la Serranía de Ronda (GR 141)

Mediterranean buckthorn (Rhamnus alaternus)

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Plant Life > Trees, Bushes and Herbaceous Plants

IDENTIFICATION

It is a bush of a very variable and branched aspect. It appears both with squatting appearance and reaching tree heights (up to 8 m high). The trunk is smooth and grey in young specimens. In adults, it cracks. The leaves are tough and evergreen, simple and are set in an alternating way. They have an elongated or oval shape and about 1 to 5 pairs of visible secondary nerves. They sometimes exhibit furs on the base, the tip and the nerves. The beam is of dark green or greyish tones, shiny or matt. The underside is fair green or yellowish, matt, sometimes with dark spots. The edge can be toothed serrated with soft thorns or full. The flowers grow in branches and are very odorous. They are small and of yellowish green tones. They have four petals. The  fruits are rounded, with two or three little marked furrows, hairless, fleshy and a red hue that turns black when ripe. 

WHERE DOES IT LIVE?

This species grows in edges and cleared forests of holm oaks, gall oaks, kermes oaks, pine forests, coastal sandbanks, hedges, Mediterranean thickets, junipers, rocks, stony, etc., It always requires sufficient moisture and shade. It is indifferent to the type of substrate, so it can be found both in acid and basic soils. It can appear from sea level to 1300 meters above sea level. It does not withstand frosts. It tolerates insolation, although it prefers shady and wet areas. 

HOW DOES IT LIVE?

The flowers are set in dense branches, often with a lot of furs. It is a dioecious species (both sexes in different specimens). The flowering occurs between winter and spring. Its flowers are pollinated by small sized insects, mainly diptera (flies) and hymenoptera (bees). The fruit is a bay (fleshy fruit with several seeds) containing between 2 to 4 little seeds. The fruiting occurs between summer and the beginning of autumn. The seeds are dispersed by the fauna ingesting the fruits.

WHERE CAN WE SEE IT IN MÁLAGA?

It is a very common species in the province, with populations from sea level to the medium mountain. It is well represented in the coastal mountain ranges, the Malaga Mountains or the Ronda mountain range. In the Great Path, we can find it on stages 3 to 8, 22, 23 and 31  to 34.

CURIOUS FACTS

The Rhamnus are bushes hard to identify for non-experts. The Latin name of this species precisely refers to this uncertainty. The Greeks used to call several types or thorny bushes Rhamnus whereas the always green ones were called alaternus, which is not much to say about an evergreen bush. Its wood has been used to make farming tool handles and small utensils, and as a base to get carbon in the gunpowder fabrication process. Its fruits are laxative and have the great property to draw wildlife a lot. That is precisely why it is a shrub with a great interest to reforest and naturally restore biodiversity in an area.

SIMILAR SPECIES

It can be confused with the green olive tree (Phillyrea latifolia), a species with which it usually shares a habitat, appearance and shape of the leaves and fruit. It differs by its leaves. The green olive tree has opposed leaves and the buckthorn has alternating ones.

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