Ziziphus oenoplia | |
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Plate from Francisco Manuel Blanco’s Flora de Filipinas (1880-1883) | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Plantae |
Division: | Magnoliophyta |
Class: | Magnoliopsida |
Order: | Rosales |
Family: | Rhamnaceae |
Genus: | Ziziphus |
Species: | Z. oenoplia |
Binomial name | |
Ziziphus oenoplia (L.) Mill. |
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Synonyms | |
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Ziziphus oenoplia , commonly known as the Jackal Jujube, Small-fruited Jujube or Wild Jujube, is a flowering plant with a broad distribution through tropical and subtropical Asia and Australasia.
Contents |
It is a spreading, sometimes climbing, thorny shrub growing to 1.5 m in height. The leaves are simple, alternate, ovate-lanceolate, acute and oblique. The flowers are green, in subsessile axillary cymes. The fruit is a globose drupe, black and shiny when ripe, containing a single seed.[1]
It ranges from the Indian subcontinent through southern China and Southeast Asia to northern Australia. It grows along roadside forests and thickets.[2]
The berries are edible and the bark is used for tanning.[2]
The plant produces cyclopeptide alkaloids known as ziziphines and has a long history of use in traditional medicine. In India the root is used in Ayurvedic medicine.[1] The Konkani people of Maharashtra use the chewed leaves as a dressing for wounds.[3] In Burma the stem bark is used as a mouthwash for sore throats, for dysentery, and for inflammation of the uterus.[4] Research in Thailand has found that extracts of ziziphine from Ziziphus oenoplia var. brunoniana show antiplasmodial activity against the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum.[5]