The petals are white to pale violet surrounding the ovary, the flower also has a bitter, sour smell.

These smooth, round berries are 6 cm in diameter and fade from green to yellow as they ripen.

Because of its dense growth and prickly nature, soda apple is used as a hedge and living barrier for containing livestock.

Traditional Zulu practices use the fruit - fresh, boiled, or charred - in herbal medicine to treat a wide variety of afflictions, including cancer, toothaches, and ringworm.

Several of these are ambiguous homonyms:[2] The botanist Bitter distinguished a number of subspecies and varieties of the soda apple, but these are not considered valid taxa anymore:[2]