Categories
Herbs & Plants

Impatiens walleriana

Botanical Name : Impatiens walleriana
Family: Balsaminaceae
Genus: Impatiens
Species:I. wallerana
Kingdom:Plantae
Order: Ericales

Synonyms:
*Impatiens giorgii De Wild.
*Impatiens holstii Engl. & Warb.
*Impatiens lujai De Wild.
*Impatiens sultani Hook.f.

Common Names: Busy Lizzie (United Kingdom), Balsam, Sultana, or Simply impatiens

Habitat :Impatiens walleriana is native to eastern Africa from Kenya to Mozambique.

Description:
Impatiens walleriana is a herbaceous perennial flowering plant growing to 15–60 cm (6–24 in) tall, with broad lanceolate leaves 3–12 cm long and 2–5 cm broad. Leaves are mostly alternate, although they may be opposite near the top of the plant. The flowers are profusely borne, 2–5 cm diameter, with five petals and a 1 cm spur. The seedpod explodes when ripe in the same manner as other Impatiens species, an evolutionary adaptation for seed dispersal. The stems are semi-succulent, and all parts of the plant (leaves, stems, flowers, roots) are soft and easily damaged.

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Edible Uses:
Root – cooked. It is a source of ’salep’, a fine white to yellowish-white powder that is obtained by drying the tuber and grinding it into a powder. Salep is a starch-like substance with a sweetish taste and a faint somewhat unpleasant smell. It is said to be very nutritious and is made into a drink or can be added to cereals and used in making bread etc. One ounce of salep is said to be enough to sustain a person for a day.

Medicinal Uses:
Salep is very nutritive and demulcent. It has been used as a diet of special value for children and convalescents, being boiled with water, flavored and prepared in the same way as arrowroot. Rich in mucilage, it forms a soothing and demulcent jelly that is used in the treatment of irritations of the gastro-intestinal canal. One part of salep to fifty parts of water is sufficient to make a jelly.

This essence of the remedy addresses mental stresses and tensions. It calms feelings of impatience and irritability. It slows the tendency to move too quickly without care or forethought. Calming. Allows one to deepen his/her life experience without experiencing burnout.

Disclaimer : The information presented herein is intended for educational purposes only. Individual results may vary, and before using any supplement, it is always advisable to consult with your own health care provider.
Resources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impatiens_walleriana
http://healthyhomegardening.com/Plant.php?pid=2173

Categories
Herbs & Plants

Cocculus palmatus

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Botanical name: Jateorhiza palmata
Family: Menispermaceae
Genus: Cocculus
Kingdom: Plantae
Order: Ranunculales
Synonym: Menispermum calumba of Roxbury; Jateorhiza calumba of Miers.

Common Name : Moonseed, Colombo

Habitat :Cocculus palmatus is native to warm temperate to tropical regions of North America, Asia and Africa. This plant inhabits the forests near the southeastern coast of Africa, in the neighborhood of Mozambique, where the natives call it Kalumb.

Description: This is a climbing annual plant. The stems are herbaceous and twining; root perennial, fasciculated, fleshy, one to three inches in diameter, brownish without, deep yellow within. The stems, of which one or two proceed from the same root, are twining, simple in the male plant, branched in the female, round, hairy, and about an inch or an inch and a half in circumference. The leaves stand on rounded glandular hairy footstalks, and are alternate, distant, cordate, and have three, seven, or nine lobes and nerves. The flowers are small and inconspicuous . Flowers on solitary axillary racemes; small, green, dioecious. Calyx six-sepaled; corolla six-petaled; stamens six; pistils three. Fruit about the size of a hazel-nut, densely covered with long spreading hairs, either drupaceous or a berry.

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The fusiform roots of this plant appear in market in thin slices transversely. “The slices are flat, circular or oval, mostly two inches in diameter and from two to four lines thick and branching. grayish-yellow, bitter.” (Pereira.) The root is often worm-eaten. Its powder has a greenish-yellow tint, a faint smell, and an aromatic bitter taste. The root is covered with a thin brown skin, marked with transverse warts.

Water, alcohol, diluted alcohol, and ether extract its virtues, which most abound in the cortical. It contains starch; a colorless neutral principle named calumbin; and an alkaloid berberia or berberin.

Medicinal Uses:
Columbo, so important in the present practice of medicine. The root is a bitter of the more relaxing order of tonics, stimulating only to a very moderate degree, and having a slightly demulcent character. It resembles the American article of a similar common name, (Frasera Carolinensis,) but is much pleasanter and not at all astringent. Its chief action is upon the stomach; and it is admirably suited to feeble conditions of this organ, with want of appetite, indigestion, flatulence, and vomiting. It never excites nausea, but on the contrary is an excellent agent to allay all forms of sympathetic vomiting, as in pregnancy; and few tonics are so well received by weak and irritable stomachs. During convalescence from fever, diarrhea, and dysentery, it is one of the most useful tonics; and it exerts a very mild influence on the hepatic apparatus, which well fits it for numerous cases of biliousness. It imparts a desirable tonic influence to the bowels. Some class it among the very powerful tonics, like gentian; but this is a mistake, for it is altogether a milder article, and suited for quite other conditions than those to which the gentian is applied. It is generally compounded with other tonics and with aromatics; and deserves more attention than it receives in America. Dose of the powder, ten to twenty grains three times a day.
Pharmaceutical Preparations: I. Infusion. Calumba in coarse powder, six drachms; boiling water, one pint. Macerate for an hour. Dose, eight to twelve fluid drachms three times a day. By adding a few grains of dill seed or fennel, the flavor is much improved.

II. Tincture. This is prepared by macerating two and a half ounces of calumba in a sufficient quantity of proof spirit; transferring to a percolator, and adding proof spirit till one pint in all has been used; then pressing the drugs strongly, and adding enough spirit to the liquid to make the product one pint. Dose, half a fluid drachm to two fluid drachms. This is often added to other tonic preparations, or to such nervine aromatic infusions as may be in use for excessive vomiting. This agent is an ingredient in the compound wine of comfrey.
Disclaimer : The information presented herein is intended for educational purposes only. Individual results may vary, and before using any supplement, it is always advisable to consult with your own health care provider.
Resources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocculus
http://www.herbnet.com/Herb%20Uses_C.htm
http://www.henriettes-herb.com/eclectic/cook/COCCULUS_PALMATUS.htm
http://chestofbooks.com/health/herbs/O-Phelps-Brown/The-Complete-Herbalist/Columbo-Cocculus-Palmatus.html#.Vk_j_SpTffI

Categories
Herbs & Plants

Calumba

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Botanical Name :Jateorhiza calumba
Family: Menispermaceae
Genus: Jateorhiza
Species: J. palmata
Kingdom: Plantae
Order: Ranunculales

Common Names:Calumba,calumba root, columba, colombo, kalumba, kalumb, jateorhiza, guvercin koku otu

Habitat : Calumba is native to the tropical areas of Eastern and Southern Africa but can now be found cultivated in many tropical regions, including Brazil. The genus, comprising only two species, is also native to the Madagascar rainforest.

Description:
Calumba is a  tall, dioecious twining perennial vine; often reaching the tops of trees. The annual stems, one or two from each root, are hair with glandular tips and have large bright green memraneous leaves which are palmate, alternate and long petioled. The flowers are insignificant and greenish-white. The female flower is followed by moon-shaped stone in a drupe. Male flowers are in 30cm( 1) long panicles. The tuberous root is large and fleshy, about 3-8 cm (1.24-3.25) in diameter with a thick bark. Transverse section yellowish, outside greyish-brown. Taste is muscilagenous and very bitter.
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Constituents:  Columbamine, Jateorhizine and Palmatine, three yellow crystalline alkaloids closely allied to berberine; also a colourless crystalline principle, Columbine, and an abundance of starch and mucilage.

Medicinal Action and Uses:
The root of this   plant is used in traditional medicine systems world wide.It is a bitter tonic without astringency, does not produce nausea, headache, sickness or feverishness as other remedies of the same class. It is best given as a cold infusion; it is a most valuable agent for weakness of the digestive organs. In pulmonary consumption it is useful, as it never debilitates or purges the bowels. The natives of Mozambique use it for dysentery It allays the sickness of pregnancy and gastric irritation. In Africa and the East Indies it is cultivated for dyeing purposes.

Calumba is an excellent digestive remedy that tones the whole tract, stimulating it gently but having no astringent properties.  It may be used whenever debility occurs that is connected with some digestive involvement.  Internally used for morning sickness, atonic dyspepsia with low stomach acid, diarrhea, and dysentery.

Disclaimer:
The information presented herein is intended for educational purposes only. Individual results may vary, and before using any supplements, it is always advisable to consult with your own health care provider

Resources:
http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/c/calumb10.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jateorhiza_calumba

http://www.herbnet.com/Herb%20Uses_C.htm

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Categories
Herbs & Plants

Cassia nomame

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Botanical Name  :Cassia nomame
Family  :FABACEAE or LEGUMINOSAE Pea Family
Genus:    Cassia
Species:C. aldabrensis
Kingdom:Plantae
Order:    Fabales
Common Names : Cassia Nomame , Hama-cha, Kita; nomame herba; Mimosoides tea

Habitat:
Cassia nomame is native to China and originally produced in the south of the Changjiang river.

The species as a whole is widespread in the tropics of the Old World and has been recorded from the Americas, but this needs confirmation. The range of variation is wide but cannot be clearly linked to either geographic origins or the effect of a hybrid swarm. At present it is simply divided into seven unnamed groups.

* Group A = C. mimosoides L. var. telfairiana Hook. is from Mauritius and the Seychelles, with closely related plants in the Sudan and the Congo . Grows from 0 to 1 370 m in altitude.

* Group B is from the Congo, the Sudan, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Angola and southern Africa. Grows at altitudes from 900 to 1 500 m.

* Group C is recorded only from Zanzibar, between sea level and 550 m.

* Group D only from north-western Kenya, between 1 680 and 1 740 m.

* Cassia Nomame Extract.CAS No:487-26-3.Flavanone.Dimer Flavonoids,Good lipase inhibitor.Cassia nomame.L.Chamaecrista mimosoides L.Greene photo picture image

*Group E is from the Sudan, the Congo, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and the Transvaal, and is closely related to plants in Nigeria, C?te d’Ivoire, Mali and Madagascar between 470 and 1 550 m.

*Group F = var. glabriuscula Ghesq., and is widespread in tropical Africa from the Gambia to Nigeria and the Sudan and southwards to Angola and Natal; it is also found in Asia from India to Australia.

*Group G occurs in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Congo, Eritrea, the Sudan, Mozambique, Zambia and Angola, and also in India between 0 and 2 110 m. It resembles C. capensis Thunb. var. humifusa Ghesq. (Brennan, 1967).C

Description:
An exceedingly variable, prostrate to erect legume up to 1.5 m high, usually annual, sometimes with stems becoming woody above ground level and enabling the plant to perenniate. Stems variable, usually puberulent with short curved hairs, sometimes more or less densely clothed with longer spreading hairs. Leaves linear to linear-oblong, more or less parallel-sided, 0.6 to 10 cm long, 0.4 to 1.5 cm . Gland usually at or near the top of the petiole, sessile, normally orbicular or nearly so, disk shaped when dry, 0.4 to 1 mm in diameter. Rachis glandular, serrate or crenate-crested along the upper side. Leaflets sessile, in 16 to 76 pairs, obliquely oblong to oblong-elliptic or linear-oblong, 2.5 to 8 (2 to 9) mm long, 0.5 to 1.25 (1.9) mm wide, acute or subacute and shortly mucronate, glabrous or nearly so. Midrib somewhat eccentric, lateral nerves obscure to prominent beneath. Inflorescence supra-axillary or sometimes axillary, one- to three-flowered. Pedicels 0.3 to 2.5 (3.0) cm long, usually shortly puberulent, sometimes spreading hairy. Petals yellow, obovate 4 to 13 mm long, 2 to 9 mm wide. Pods linear to linear-oblong, (sometimes 1.5 but usually 3.5 to 8 cm long); 3.5 mm wide, usually adpressed hairy. Seeds brown, more or less rhombic, 2 to 3 mm long, 1 to 2 mm wide

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Constituents:  flavanols, catechins

Parts Used: Powdered seed

Medicinal Uses:
An extract of this herb is showing up in many weight loss and diet formulations. The claim is that Cassia nomame is a natural lipase inhibitor, which means it disrupts the digestive enzyme process to block fat from getting into the bloodstream. It also is said to have diuretic and stimulating properties. The most prevalent sources of information I have been able to find concerning this herb are those who have a financial interest in selling it. While it may well work, documentation is thin for the most part.

Disclaimer : The information presented herein is intended for educational purposes only. Individual results may vary, and before using any supplement, it is always advisable to consult with your own health care provider

Resources:
http://www.mdidea.net/products/herbextract/dimer/data02.html
http://www.anniesremedy.com/herb_detail168.php

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