Vernonia auriculifera (PROTA)

Plant Resources of Tropical Africa Introduction

List of species

General importance
Geographic coverage Africa
Geographic coverage World
Dye / tannin
Medicinal
Timber
Fuel
Forage / feed
Auxiliary plant
Fibre

Vernonia auriculifera Hiern

Protologue: Cat. Afr. Pl. 1: 539 (1898).

Family: Asteraceae (Compositae)

• Vernonia laurentii De Wild. (1915),
• Vernonia uniflora Hutch. & Dalziel (1931),
• Gymnanthemum auriculiferum (Hiern) Isawumi (2008).

Vernonia auriculifera occurs from Nigeria and Cameroon eastward to Ethiopia and southward to Angola and Tanzania.

In Kenya Maasai use the stems and leaves in hut-construction and Kipsigis use these materials to make platforms in hut-roofs for grain storage. In Kenya the leaves are also used for wrapping plant drugs to be roasted and used as a poultice. In Uganda the leaves are used as a substitute for toilet paper.

The stems are burnt as fuel. In Rwanda and DR Congo the leaves and young twigs are eaten by domestic animals. The stems, leaves and flowers yield a dye: green coloured without mordant or with alum, and golden coloured with chrome. Vernonia auriculifera is left to grow or sometimes planted as a fallow plant to improve the soil or as a shade-providing nurse tree. In Ethiopia it is said that when the plant flowers it is time to sow millet.

In Kenya Vernonia auriculifera is used in traditional medicine in similar manners as Vernonia amygdalina Delile. Meinit people in Ethiopia apply the root topically against toothache. In Tanzania the root soaked in water is a purgative for children. In DR Congo a drop of juice from the crushed stem bark is instilled in each nostril to treat headache. Leaf preparations are used in various countries against dysentery and stomachache. In Uganda an infusion of the leaves is taken against worms and a leaf decoction is drunk for the treatment of malaria. Leaf extracts are drunk as oxytocic and abortifacient and against post-partum pains. Pulverized leaves are used against impetigo, and in Congo the dried and pounded leaves are applied on wounds. In Cameroon the leaf juice is used as eye drops for the treatment of cataract.

Vernonia auriculifera is only used locally.

8-Desacylvernodalol was isolated from the methanolic extract of fresh leaves of Vernonia auriculifera. The compound exhibited phytotoxic activity against seedlings of lettuce. Chloroform, ethyl acetate and methanol leaf extracts have shown mild antiplasmodial activity against Plasmodium falciparum isolate K39. In a test in Uganda, the dichloromethane extract of the root has shown slight antitrypanosomal activity. In Kenya, extracts of Vernonia auriculifera were found to be toxic, possibly due to hydroperoxides of unsaturated fatty acid methyl esters.

Small tree, shrub or woody herb up to 9 m tall; stems branching from low down, at first brownish hairy; bark smooth, grey. Leaves petiolate or especially the upper ones sessile; petiole up to 7.5 cm long, often auriculate; blade elliptical or narrowly obovate to ovate, 10–45 cm × 3–23 cm, attenuate towards the rounded, truncate or cordate base, apex acute or shortly acuminate, margin toothed, upper surface dull green, thinly fine-hairy mainly on veins and glabrescent, lower surface whitish with often floccose tomentum. Inflorescence composed of numerous heads in very large terminal compound thyrsoid cymes, the whole inflorescence up to 150 cm in diameter; involucre narrowly cylindrical, 4–6 mm long; phyllaries in 6–7 rows, appressed, green, especially the inner rows often tinged purplish in the upper part, broadly ovate to ovate or elliptical, apex obtuse to rounded, minutely apiculate, the inner rows elliptical, 4–6 mm long, usually acute, the innermost eventually falling. Florets 1 per head; corolla 6.5–9 mm long, scented, mauve, lilac or purplish, fading to white with age, lobes 2–3 mm long, glabrous except the throat; anthers distally with linear or lanceolate appendage; style branches long-tapering with stigmatic papillae above near the base. Fruit an achene 3–4 mm long, 8–10-ribbed, shortly ascending-pubescent to almost glabrescent except at the apex; outer pappus of narrow scales up to 1.5 mm long, inner pappus white, 5–8 mm long.

Vernonia comprises about 500 species in the Old World tropics and the Americas. It is here retained in a broad sense, but major changes in the circumscription are underway in the Old World species; Vernonia auriculifera has recently been transferred to Gymnanthemum, but the old name is retained in the present article because not the whole genus has been revised yet.

Vernonia auriculifera occurs at 750–3000 m altitude in open grassland or at the margin of forest in mountainous areas. In south-western Uganda it is characteristic of the shrub layer in old secondary vegetation changing into forest, e.g. in abandoned banana plantations. It is locally abundant in wet montane forest, but also beside streams or lakes, e.g. in Uganda.

Vernonia auriculifera may be propagated by seed or wildlings. Plants are fast-growing and yield fuelwood in 3–5 years.

Vernonia auriculifera has a wide area of distribution and is locally common. There are no indications that it is in danger of genetic erosion.

The medicinal uses of Vernonia auriculifera warrant further pharmacological research. Its role as a fallow and fuel crop deserves more attention. As a fibre plant it is likely to remain of local use only.

• Adams, C.D., 1963. Compositae. 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. 225–297.

• Beentje, H.J., 2000. Compositae (part 1). In: Beentje, H.J. (Editor). Flora of Tropical East Africa. A.A. Balkema, Rotterdam, Netherlands. pp. 1–313.

• Hindmarsh, L., 1982. A notebook for Kenyan dyers. National Museum of Kenya, Nairobi, Kenya. 65 pp.

• Katende, A.B., Birnie, A. & Tengnäs, B., 1995. Useful trees and shrubs for Uganda: identification, propagation and management for agricultural and pastoral communities. Technical Handbook 10. Regional Soil Conservation Unit, Nairobi, Kenya. 710 pp.

• Neuwinger, H.D., 2000. African traditional medicine: a dictionary of plant use and applications. Medpharm Scientific, Stuttgart, Germany. 589 pp.

• Chifundera, K., 2001. Contribution to the inventory of medicinal plants from the Bushi area, South Kivu Province, Democratic Republic of Congo. Fitoterapia 72: 351–368.

• Freiburghaus, F., Ogwal, E.N., Nkunya, M.H.H., Kaminsky, R. & Brun, R., 1996. In vitro antitrypanosomal activity of African plants used in traditional medicine in Uganda to treat sleeping sickness. Tropical Medecine and International Health 1(6): 765–771.

• Giday, M., Asfaw, Z. & Woldu, Z., 2009. Medicinal plants of the Meinit ethnic group of Ethiopia: An ethnobotanical study. Journal of Ethnopharmacology 124(3): 513–521.

• Hamill, F.A., Apio, S., Mubiru, N.K., Mosango, M., Bukenya-Ziraba, R., Maganyi, O.W. & Soejarto, D.D., 2000. Traditional herbal drugs of southern Uganda, 1. Journal of Ethnopharmacology 70: 281–300.

• Isawumi, M.A., 2008. The status of generic revision in the African Vernonieae (Asteraceae). Compositae Newsletter 46: 27–48.

• Kanzila, M., 1994. La prospection des ligneux fourragers dans la Communauté économique des Pays des Grands Lacs (Burundi, Rwanda, Zaïre). Revue d’élevage et de médecine vétérinaire des pays tropicaux 47(4): 415–424.

• Keriko, J.M., Nakajima, S., Baba, N., Isozaki, Y., Ikeda, K., Alam, M.K. & Iwasa, J., 1995. Hydroperoxides of unsaturated fatty acid methyl esters from Kenyan plant, Vernonia auriculifera. Journal of the Japan Oil Chemists’ Society - Yukagaku 44(4): 338–340.

• Keriko, J.M., Nakajima, S., Baba, N., Isozaki, Y., Ikeda, K., Iwasa, J. & Karanja, P.N., 1995. A plant growth regulator from Vernonia auriculifera (Asteraceae). Zeitschrift fuer Naturforschung - Section C, Biosciences 50 (5–6): 455–458.

• Kokwaro, J.O., 1993. Medicinal plants of East Africa. 2nd Edition. Kenya Literature Bureau, Nairobi, Kenya. 401 pp.

• Muregi, F.W., Chhabra, S.C., Njagi, E.N.M., Lang'at Thoruwa, C.C., Njue, W.M., Orago, A.S.S., Omar, S.A. & Ndiege, I.O., 2003. In vitro antiplasmodial activity of some plants used in Kisii, Kenya against malaria and their chloroquine potentiation effects. Journal of Ethnopharmacology 84(2–3): 235–239.

• L.P.A. Oyen, PROTA Network Office Europe, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 341, 6700 AH Wageningen, Netherlands

Oyen, L.P.A., 2010. Vernonia auriculifera Hiern. [Internet] Record from PROTA4U. Brink, M. & Achigan-Dako, E.G. (Editors). PROTA (Plant Resources of Tropical Africa / Ressources végétales de l’Afrique tropicale), Wageningen, Netherlands. <http://www.prota4u.org/search.asp>.

Accessed 31 May 2025.

• See the Prota4U database.