Sechuan Button

Overview

It is native to the Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Papua, New Guinea, Peru, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, China, Thailand and Vietnam. The plant is now grown both in the tropics and subtropics including America, Northern Australia, Africa, South-East Asia, India and Sri Lanka. The leaves are eaten raw or as a vegetable by many tribes of India.

Vernacular Names

Abecedária (Brazil), Jin chou kou (Chinese), Brede mafane (French), Spilante (Italian), Hokoso (Japanese), Getang (Malay), Phak khrat (Thai).

Agroecology

It is found in moist, damp environment, in villages, pastures, rice fields and cultivated areas, along ditches, marshy meadows, open waste places, old clearings, on open hillsides and the rocky shores of rivers, and along roadsides. This plant thrives best in soil rich in compost. It is frost-sensitive but perennial in warmer climates.

Morphology

• Stems - branched, erect or ascending, up to 30 cm or more tall.
• Leaves - stalked, ovate to ovatelanceshaped, 2-4 cm long, 1-2.5 cm broad, tip pointed, base narrow, 3-nerved, entire, coarsely or rounded toothedly toothed.
• Inflorescence - capitulum (head), heads yellowish-brown, 0.6- .2 cm across, ovoid, florets yellow, involucral bracts pubescent, short. All the florets are yellow.
• Fruits - achene 0.15-0.2 cm long, oblong, compressed, glabrous but for ciliate margins.

Cultivation

• Propagated by stem cuttings. Choose a stem which is already rooting. Sever the stem near the crown, keeping attached rootlets intact. Plant this start in a pot, or give it a new place in the garden. Keep constantly moist until the new plant overcomes transplant shock.

Chemical Constituents

• Spilanthol, ethanol, a fatty acid amide that contains natural analgesic properties, alkaloid, saponin, flavonoid, tannin.

Traditional Medicinal Uses

• The leaves may also use to treat bacterial and fungal skin diseases.
• Flowers are used to cure tooth-ache and gum infections.
• In ancient time it has been used as medicine for treatment of many diseases like, rheumatism, cold and fever, purgation, urinary tract infection, pulverization of kidney, gall stones and remedy for stammering in children.
• Chewing the heads relieves toothache or a tincture made from the flower heads and applied in some lint to the teeth and gums is even more effective against toothache.
• Leaf juice and bruised leaves are applied to wounds and atonic ulcers.
• Decoction of plant is used as diuretic and as solvent for vesical calculi.
• Whole plant are used in treatment of dysentery and rheumatism.
• Flower heads, the most pungent of parts, are chewed by Hindus to relieve toothache, as it produces numbness, redness of the gums and salivation.
• In Sri Lanka, flowers are used for its diuretic activity.
• In the Cameroons, flowering heads are rubbed on the forehead for headaches. Also, combined with other plants, chewed and swallowed for snake bites and as local treatment for wounds