Digital Garden

Morinda citrifolia L.

ചെറുമഞ്ഞണാത്തി

Family : RUBIACEAE

Synonym : Morinda bracteata Roxb.

Common Names : Cherumanjanathi, Kattapitalavam, Manjanathi, Great Morinda, Indian Mulberry

Flowering Period : July-November

Distribution : Indo-Malesia to Australia

Habitat : Waste places and mangrove forests

Uses : The unripe fruit is used in Indian cooking in sambals and curries. The juice of the fruit is used in Australian bushfoods for dressings, sauces and marinades. The roots are febrifuge, tonic and antiseptic. Externally, the root is crushed and mixed with oil and is used as a smallpox salve. The wilted or heated leaf is applied as a poultice to painful swellings in order to bring relief. The fruits are used as a diuretic, a laxative, an emollient and as an emmenagogue, for treating asthma and other respiratory problems, as a treatment for arthritic and comparable inflammations, in cases of leucorrhoea and sapraemia and for maladies of the inner organs. A red dye is obtained from the root bark.

Key Characters :

Evergreen shrubs or small crooked trees, 3-8 m high; bark greyish or yellowish- brown, shallowly fissured, glabrous; branchlets quandrangular. Leaves simple, opposite, 12-50 x 5-17 cm, elliptic-lanceolate, entire, acute to shortly acuminate to apex, cuneate at base, pinnately nerved, glabrous; petioles 0.5-2.5 cm long; stipules variable in size and shape, broadly triangular. Flowers bisexual, fragrant, in dense globose heads, connate by the calyces, peduncle 1-4 cm long, opposite to normally developed leaves. Calyx tube hemispheric, limb truncate. Corolla funnel-shaped, up to 1.5 cm long, lobes 5 lanceolate, acute. Stamens 5, inserted on the mouth of the corolla; filaments hairy. Ovary 2-celled, ovule solitary; stigma bilobed. Fruit an ovoid syncarp of pyramidal, 2-seeded drupes, 3-10 cm x 2-3 cm, yellow-white; seeds black, with hard albumen and distinct air chamber.