Ziziphus oenoplia

Ziziphus oenoplia
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.
Synonyms
  • Rhamnus oenoplia L.

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

Description

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]

Distribution and habitat

It ranges from the Indian subcontinent through southern China and Southeast Asia to northern Australia. It grows along roadside forests and thickets.[2]

Uses

The berries are edible and the bark is used for tanning.[2]

Medicinal

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]

References

Notes

  1. ^ a b Ayurvedic medicinal plants.
  2. ^ a b Ara et al. (2008).
  3. ^ Kuvar & Bapat (2010).
  4. ^ Myanmar Medicinal Plant Database.
  5. ^ Sunit Suksamrarn et al. (2005).

Sources