Climbing Fern

Stenochlaena palustris is spreading from India throughout Southeast Asia to Australia and Polynesia. The plant is not cultivated commercially, but is only grown locally on a small scale, usually in hedgerows. In Southeast Asia, its pink, crunchy leaves are enjoyed as a vegetable, and cooked after wilting. It tastes similar to spinach. In Java, Indonesia, the leaves are highly valued as a lalap (vegetable salad) served with chili sauce and rice. S. palustris is also often grown as an ornamental plant and its black rhizomes are sometimes used as wigs to increase thin hair. In general, rhizomes are used as a source of fiber, as a substitute for rattan for tying fish traps, making baskets, ropes and belts. In addition, people believe that S. palustris has various uses as a medicinal plant. In Sumatra, this vegetable is eaten as a laxative.

Diliman (Philippines), Prong suan (Thai), Akar paku (Malay).

Stenochlaena palustris is usually found in slightly wet soil in freshwater swamp forests, behind mangrove forests, along rivers, swamps, in floating vegetation, lowland rainforests, also found in drier places and free from flooding from the surface sea to a height of 300 m above sea level, and 900 m above sea level in Java. In Thailand and Papua New Guinea, this plant is found in lowlands and low hills up to an altitude of 300-400 m above sea level. Generally, this plant is an epiphytic plant that propagates and climbs high in areas that are regularly flooded with water, where the lower part of the rhizome is often submerged. Tolerant of full sun, but prefers partial shade. In warm climates, this plant will grow easily, as long as there is enough light and humidity.

• Rhizomes - long-creeping, scrambling or climbing on tree-trunks, up to 1 cm in diameter, green; scales peltate, brown, imbricate, absent from the older parts of the rhizome.
• Leaves - well spaced, dimorphic, pinnate; petiole firm, erect, 7—30(—82) cm long, adaxially slightly canaliculate, stramineous to brown, glabrous or with reddish-brown peltate scales; lamina ovate, 17—50(—180) cm x 9—50 cm, bright green, young leaves red, intermediate stages olivaceous, coriaceous and lustrous, glabrous although young plants may have some scales and short pale hairs all over, with 4—14 pairs of alternating pinnae; rachis and costae stramineous to brown, glabrous; sterile pinnae variable in size and shape, short petiolate, articulate to the rachis, lamina narrowly ovate to lanceolate, 5—20 cm x 1—5 cm, the base unequal, cuneately rounded with a small pulvinate gland on the acroscopic side, margins hyaline, sharply irregularly serrate, apex acuminate; veins pellucid, simple or forked, at a broad angle from a row of very narrow costal areoles to the margin, not reduced to the lamina basis but with a few rudimentary pinnae on the petiole below the normal ones; fertile pinnae much constricted, 2—5 mm wide, the margin often protecting the young sori.
• Sori - acrostichoid except for a narrow marginal band, without paraphyses. Spores bilateral, 41 µm x 27 µm, colourless, translucent, papillose-verrucose.

• Propagated by spores and division.
• Large divisions establish better than small ones

Five flavonol glycosides (stenopalustroside A-E), kaempferol 3-O-(3' '-O-E-p-coumaroyl)−(6' '-O-E-feruloyl)-β-d-glucopyranoside (6), kaempferol 3-O-(3' ,6' '-di-O-E-p-coumaroyl)-β-d-glucopyranoside, kaempferol 3-O-(3' '-O-E-p-coumaroyl)-β-d-glucopyranoside, kaempferol 3-O-(6' '-O-E-p -coumaroyl)-β-d-glucopyranoside, kaempferol 3-O-β-d-glucopyranoside, alkaloids, flavonoids, glycosylglucose, lipid derivatives, saponins, steroids and terpenoids.

• Reduces fever.
• Treats skin diseases, acne, boils, stomach ache, testicular trophies.
• Heals wounds, infections and diabetes.
• Laxative and contraceptive.