Drumstick tree

Moringa is grown for what it produces rather than what it looks like. The leaves are small, rounded and arranged on feathery compound stalks, and they are the part most people are after. They are eaten as a vegetable, dried and powdered, and fed to livestock, and they carry useful quantities of protein, vitamins and minerals, which is why the tree has become a staple of nutrition and food security programmes across the tropics.

Cream-white flowers appear through much of the year in a warm climate, sweetly scented and heavily worked by bees, which makes it a productive honey plant. The pods that follow are the drumsticks of the common name: long, ribbed, hanging straight down and reaching 45cm or more. Young pods are cooked as a vegetable across South and Southeast Asia. Mature seeds yield ben oil, which is stable, nearly odourless and has been used in cosmetics, lubricants and cooking for centuries.

Crushed seeds also have a well-documented use in water treatment. The proteins they contain bind suspended particles and pull them out of solution, and the method has been studied and applied in rural water purification in several countries.