Crotalaria verrucosa (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Crotalaria verrucosa L.

Family: Leguminosae - Papilionoideae

Synonyms

• Crotalaria caerulaea Jacq.

Vernacular names

• Blue rattleweed, purple rattlebox, warty crotalaria (En)
• Malaysia: gegiring jantan
• Philippines: bulai laua (Tagalog), gulinggam (Sulu), reging (Bagobo).
• Burma (Myanmar): hing hai bay yai
• Cambodia: voë(lli) châ:ng, khnâ:ng prâmat' (Pursat), châ:ngkrâ:ng tma:t
• Laos: (ko: hnha:z) lem (Houa Pan)
• Thailand: kraphohphi (south-eastern), makhing-nu (northern), hinghai-baiyai (central)
• Vietnam: sục sạc (southern).

Distribution

Originating from tropical Asia, now pantropically distributed.

Uses

Green manure. Roots are used against fever (Cambodia, Laos) and stomach pain (Vietnam). Used in India to purify blood, to cure skin diseases, and as emmenagogue. It produces a neutral seed-gum polysaccharide and the flowers produce kaempferol. Seed caused liver damage to test animals. It is a potential ornamental.

Observations

• Annual, subwoody herb, 0.5-1 m tall, with many quadrangular, velvety hairy, yellow branches.
• Leaves simple, ovate to elliptical, 5-14 cm × 4-9 cm, pubescent; petiole 4-8 mm long; stipules sickle-shaped, 5-20 mm × 4-14 mm, auricled, persistent.
• Inflorescence a lax raceme, 5-25 cm long, leaf-opposed, with up to 24 flowers; pedicel filiform, up to 5 mm long; bracts linear-acuminate, 4 mm long.
• Calyx campanulate, 7-11 mm long, hairy, with subequal triangular-acuminate lobes; corolla blue; standard elliptical to suborbicular, 14 mm in diameter; wings ovate-oblong, 13 mm × 6 mm; keel 12 mm × 6 mm, incurved in the middle.
• Pod oblongoid, 3-5 cm × 0.8-1.2 cm, short stalked, about 16-seeded.
• Seed heart-shaped, 3 mm in diameter, blackish.

C. verrucosa is found in fallow fields and on marshy ground, along rivers and roads, up to 1200 m altitude. It fixes nitrogen and is self-pollinating.

Selected sources

8, 48, 52, 53, 62, 96, 126.

Authors

• M.S.M. Sosef & L.J.G. van der Maesen