Crotalaria quinquefolia (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Crotalaria quinquefolia L.

Family: Leguminosae - Papilionoideae

Synonym

• Crotalaria heterophylla L.f.

Vernacular names

• Tcha-tcha (En, Fr)
• Philippines: buli-laua, katanda (Tagalog), palpaltog (Ilokano)
• Cambodia: chângrô:ng sva: (Battambang)
• Thailand: hinghoi (northern)
• Vietnam: sục sạc cao (Lâm Dông).

Distribution

From India throughout South-East Asia to Australia; introduced and distributed pantropically.

Uses

Excellent green manure, but heavily attacked by pests in Java during later stages of growth and producing hardly any seed. Cover crop and green manure in India and Vietnam. The flowers are eaten steamed as a vegetable. Pods are used for treating snake and millipede bites. Monocrotaline in the seed is toxic to poultry, occasionally fatal. As in other Crotalaria spp., the bark contains fibres.

Observations

• Annual herb or subshrub up to 2 m tall with few angularly furrowed branches.
• Leaves palmately 5-foliolate; stipules sickle-shaped, 2-5 mm long, persistent; petiole 1-6 cm long; leaflets linear-oblong, 3-8 cm × 0.5-1.5 cm, glabrous above, hairy below.
• Inflorescence a lax, terminal raceme, 10-20 cm long, rarely leaf-opposed; pedicel 5-10 mm long.
• Calyx campanulate, 12 mm long, glabrous, with oblong mucronulate lobes of similar size; corolla yellow, pink-violet veined, larger than calyx; standard almost round, about 2 cm in diameter; wings oblong, about 17 mm × 8 mm; keel 16 mm × 9 mm, incurved in the middle.
• Pod cylindrical, compressed, 5-6 cm × 1-2 cm, glabrous, brown, up to 30-seeded.
• Seed reniform, about 4 mm × 3.5 mm, brownish, papillate.

C. quinquefolia is found in open forest, swampy locations and ruderal sites, up to 900 m altitude.

Selected sources

• Backer, C.A. & Bakhuizen van den Brink Jr., R.C., 1963-1968. Flora of Java. 3 volumes. Wolters-Noordhoff, Groningen, the Netherlands. 647, 641, 761 pp.
• Burkill, I.H., 1966. A dictionary of the economic products of the Malay Peninsula. 2nd Edition. 2 volumes. Ministry of Agriculture and Co-operatives, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 2444 pp.
• Flore du Cambodge, du Laos et du Viêt-nam [Flora of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam] (various editors), 1960-. Volume 1-. Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Laboratoire de Phanérogamie, Paris, France.
• Hacker, J.B., 1990. A guide to herbaceous and shrub legumes of Queensland. University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, Australia. 351 pp.
• Heyne, K., 1950. De nuttige planten van Indonesië [The useful plants of Indonesia]. 3rd Edition. 2 volumes. W. van Hoeve, the Hague, the Netherlands/Bandung, Indonesia. 261, 1450 pp.
• Mansfeld, R., 1986. Verzeichnis landwirtschaflicher und gärtnerischer Kulturpflanzen (ohne Zierpflanzen) [Register of cultivated agricultural and horticultural plants (without ornamentals)]. Schultze-Motel, J. et al., editors 2nd edition, 4 volumes. Springer Verlag, Berlin, Germany. 1998 pp.
• Verdcourt, B., 1979. A manual of New Guinea legumes. Botany Bulletin No 11. Office of Forests, Division of Botany, Lae, Papua New Guinea. 645 pp.

Authors

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