Erythrophleum couminga

Erythrophleum couminga is a deciduous leguminous tree of up to 20 metres, endemic to the western coastal region of Madagascar, where it occurs in the Baie de Baly National Park. Its range is a strip about 40 kilometres wide along some 400 kilometres of coast, in mixed deciduous woodland and wooded savannas. The timber is durable and resistant to rot, but little used apart from fence posts. The foliage is poisonous to cattle, and the flowers and bark are even more toxic. The bark contains complex diterpenoid alkaloids and is powdered and used in traditional medicine in very small quantities as a laxative. In larger quantities an extract of the bark is a powerful cardiac poison. In the past the bark was used as a poison in trials by ordeal, a custom that continued in Madagascar into the mid-nineteenth century.