Mpaga

Adenia globosa is a flowering plant of the passionflower family, Passifloraceae, native to tropical Africa, where it occurs in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Tanzania. It is known as mpaga in Swahili. It is a shrub or climbing plant with a warty trunk up to eight metres tall when growing erect, and may take a shorter, wider, globular form more than two metres across. It is usually succulent and has thorns up to eight centimetres long. The greenish flowers are solitary or borne in small clusters. Wikipedia says the plant is used in traditional African medicine for abdominal pain and itching, that the Maasai use it as medicine for their cattle, and that in the lower Taita region of Kenya the peeled bulbous part is used to purify dirty water. It is cultivated and traded as an ornamental.