melkbosn.
/ˈmɛlkbɒs/, U.S. /ˈmɛlkˌbɔs/, /ˈmɛlkˌbɑs/, South African English /ˈmelkbɒs/ South African.
Any of various shrubs or small trees with milky sap; spec. (a) any of several shrubby or tree-sized spurges, esp. Euphorbia mauritanica; (b) the Transvaal rubber tree, Diplorhynchus condylocarpon (family Apocynaceae).
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the world > plants > particular plants > cultivated or valued plants > particular tree or plant yielding useful gum or resin > rubber trees or plants > [noun]
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seringue1850
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gutta-percha1860
taban1861
melkbos1862
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1862 ‘A Lady’ Let. 23 Apr. in Life at Cape (1963) ix. 100 Here also you find tufts of reed called the ‘melkbosch’, which are full of a milky fluid, only grateful to goats, for sheep will not touch it.
1898 in T. R. Sim Forests & Forest Flora Cape of Good Hope (1907) 316 The local name of the plant is Olifant Melkbosch.
1920 F. C. Cornell Glamour of Prospecting 46 Tattered, torn, dusty, covered in melkbosch-juice from the thickets we had traversed.
1939 ‘D. Rame’ Wine of Good Hope i. vii. 92 They camped below melk-bosch trees.
1951 L. G. Green Grow Lovely xxiv. 199 An even more historic landmark..is the gnarled melkbos tree known as ‘the old slave tree’.
1957 Cape Times 12 Sept. 2/4 The Board decided to give a melkbosch tree for an afforestation scheme.
1973 E. Palmer & N. Pitman Trees Southern Afr. III. 1911 One of the features of the tree [sc. Diplorhynchus condylocarpon] is its milky latex which when ‘dry’ is soft, sticky and rubber-like and which gives it the common names of ‘rubber tree’ or ‘melkbos’.
1988 G. Croudace Secret of Rock 36 The wind was still raging..tossing the branches of the melkbos, though their camp in the lee of the slow-growing tree was fairly sheltered.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2001; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1862