Artanema longifolium (PROTA)

Plant Resources of Tropical Africa Introduction

List of species

General importance
Geographic coverage Africa
Geographic coverage World
Vegetable
Food security

Artanema longifolium (L.) Vatke

Protologue: Linnaea 43: 307 (1882).

Family: Scrophulariaceae

Chromosome number:

• Artanema sesamoides (Vahl) Benth. (1835).

Artanema longifolium is found in tropical Africa from Liberia to Cameroon, DR Congo, Uganda and Tanzania. It occurs also in India and throughout tropical South-East Asia.

In Nigeria and Tanzania the leaves of Artanema longifolium are collected from the wild and eaten as a vegetable.

An aqueous extract of Artanema longifolium is a component of Ayurvedic medicines used against inflammations of the skeleto-muscular system. It is also used against nausea.

• Erect, often branched herb up to 90 cm tall with sharply quadrangular to almost 4-winged, fleshy, hollow stem.
• Leaves opposite, simple, subsessile; blade lanceolate, 3.5–25 cm × 1–9 cm, margin entire to slightly serrate, glabrous but rough above because of small bristles.
• Inflorescence a terminal, erect, many-flowered, peduncled raceme up to 40 cm long.
• Flowers bisexual, zygomorphic; pedicel up to 1 cm long; calyx 5-lobed almost to the base, lobes ovate-oblong, 3–10 mm long, overlapping at anthesis, persistent in fruit; corolla deep red-purple, glandular hairy, with wide tube and 2 lips 1–3 cm long, upper lip erect, broadly rounded, emarginate, lower lip patent, rounded, 3-fid; stamens 4, didynamous, filaments with a disk-like appendage; ovary superior, 2-celled, style filiform, stigma 2-lobed.
• Fruit a subglobose capsule up to 1 cm in diameter, many-seeded.
• Seeds ellipsoid-globose, yellow-brown, tuberculate.
• Seedling with epigeal germination; hypocotyl 3–7 mm long, epicotyl very short; cotyledons rhomboid, 4–5 mm long, leafy.

Artanema is poorly known; it comprises about 4 species and is distributed in tropical Africa and Asia. It has been classified in tribe Gratioleae, which is highly diverse and split up in recent molecular-systematic studies. Artanema was not included in these studies.

Artanema longifolium occurs in forest and scrub vegetation, in humid and swampy localities, and is common along rice fields and watercourses, and in soggy grassland, up to 400 m altitude.

Artanema longifolium is widespread in tropical Africa and Asia and not in danger of genetic erosion.

Artanema longifolium will remain a minor leaf vegetable. Its nutritional composition needs investigation. With its deep red-purple flowers it is decorative and seems to have potential as an attractive garden ornamental.

• Burkill, H.M., 2000. The useful plants of West Tropical Africa. 2nd Edition. Volume 5, Families S–Z, Addenda. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, United Kingdom. 686 pp.

• Hepper, F.N., 1963. Scrophulariaceae. In: Hepper, F.N. (Editor). Flora of West Tropical Africa. Volume 2. 2nd Edition. Crown Agents for Oversea Governments and Administrations, London, United Kingdom. pp. 352–374.

• Soerjani, M., Kostermans, A.J.G.H. & Tjitrosoepomo, G. (Editors), 1987. Weeds of rice in Indonesia. Balai Pustaka, Jakarta, Indonesia. 716 pp.

• Hemsley, W.B. & Skan, S.A., 1905–1906. Scrophulariaceae. In: Thiselton-Dyer, W.T. (Editor). Flora of tropical Africa. Volume 4(2). Lovell Reeve & Co, London, United Kingdom. pp. 261–462.

• Olmstead, R.G., dePamphilis, C.W., Wolfe, A.D., Young, N.D., Elisons, W.J. & Reeves, P.A., 2001. Disintegration of the Scrophulariaceae. American Journal of Botany 88: 348–361.

• van den Bergh, M.H., 1993. Minor vegetables. In: Siemonsma, J.S. & Kasem Piluek (Editors). Plant Resources of South-East Asia No 8. Vegetables. Pudoc Scientific Publishers, Wageningen, Netherlands. pp. 280–310.

• P.C.M. Jansen, PROTA Network Office Europe, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 341, 6700 AH Wageningen, Netherlands

Jansen, P.C.M., 2004. Artanema longifolium (L.) Vatke. [Internet] Record from PROTA4U. Grubben, G.J.H. & Denton, O.A. (Editors). PROTA (Plant Resources of Tropical Africa / Ressources végétales de l’Afrique tropicale), Wageningen, Netherlands.

Accessed 3 April 2025.