Callicarpa caudata (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Callicarpa caudata Maxim.

Protologue: Bull. Acad. Imp. Sci. Saint-Pétersbourg 31: 76 (1887).

• Papua New Guinea: mamen (Mt. Hagen, Western Highlands)
• Philippines: anayop (Igorot, Bontok), haray-hai (Negrito), kabatit (Bagobo).

From the Philippines southward to the Moluccas, New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Australia (Queensland); its range possibly extends to China, Sulawesi and Timor.

In the Philippines, a decoction of fresh or dried leaves is used as a cure for stomach trouble. In Mt. Hagen, Papua New Guinea, the leaves are externally applied to relieve earache.

• An evergreen shrub up to 4 m tall, stem and branches glandular, densely clothed with whitish-yellow or feruginous tomentum of simple septate hairs.
• Leaves narrowly lanceolate, 8.5-20.5 cm × (2-)3-5(-6) cm, base rounded, truncate or cordulate, apex long-tapering caudate, margin dentate, reddish-yellow glands on both surfaces, densely tomentose beneath with ferruginous stellate-dendriform hairs, pubescent above with simple septate hairs, petiole 0.3-1.5 cm long, floccose tomentose with ferruginous simple hairs.
• Cyme ferruginous tomentose, primary peduncle longer than the petiole, 0.5-2(-2.5) cm long.
• Flowers pedicellate, calyx minutely 4-toothed, 1-1.5 mm long, glandular and with long simple hairs outside, corolla mauve, tube 2 mm long, lobes broadly ovate, 1 mm long, glabrous all over, stamens exserted, ovary globose, glabrous, glandular all over, style exserted, 4 mm long.
• Drupe globular, 2 mm in diameter, glabrous, glandular, pink.

C. caudata is closely related to C. pilosissima Maxim. from Taiwan. In the Philippines C. caudata is found on steep open slopes, in thickets and in stream depressions from 1200-2000 m altitude.

• [418] Holdsworth, D.K., 1977. Medicinal plants of Papua New Guinea. Technical Paper No 175. South Pacific Commission, Noumea, New Caledonia. 123 pp.
• [810] Quisumbing, E., 1978. Medicinal plants of the Philippines. Katha Publishing Co., Quezon City, the Philippines. 1262 pp.

• Callicarpa (Medicinal plants)

• J.L.C.H. van Valkenburg & N. Bunyapraphatsara