Geophila repens

Original habitat is obscure, but the plant is found in the tropics and subtropics of Africa, Asia, through the Pacific to the Americas and Caribbean. It can be grown as a ground cover plant in shady places. The plant is sometimes harvested from the wild for local use as a food and medicine. This plant has been widely used as traditional medicine in various countries, such as peninsular Malaysia, Thailand, and Africa. In Africa, leaves are eaten as a vegetable by barren women suffering from abdominal troubles and anaemia, and by convalescents to restore vigour and fecundity.

Pegaga ular, Pegaga tikus, Pantat berok (Peninsular Malaysia), Mali din (Trat), Uttaphit nam (Peninsular Thailand).

Grows best in the dappled shade of a woodland. Prefers a humus-rich soil. Succeeds in moist to wet soils. The plant has spread widely from its original range and is now naturalized through most of the tropics and subtropics.

• Stems papillose up to 50 cm long, profusely rooting.
• Leaves opposite, cordate-orbicular or cordate-reniform, 2-4.5 cm x 1.5-4.5 cm, usually glabrous, palmately 7-9-veined, markedly pale below; petiole 1-9 cm long, densely papillose; stipules interpetiolar, transversely elliptical.
• Inflorescence a terminal few-flowered umbel (flowers often solitary); peduncle up to 4 cm long, papillose-pubescent. Flowers bisexual, (4-)5(-7)-merous; calyx deeply divided, lobes 3-4 mm long; corolla tubular-infundibuliform, with tube 8-11 mm long and lobes 5-8 mm long, white, soon caducous; stamens inserted in corolla tube, filaments minute; ovary inferior, 2-celled, crowned by a thick disk, style 2-branched.
• Fruit a globose or broadly ellipsoid drupe c. 8 mm in diameter, red, sometimes orange when ripe; pyrenes 2, plano-convex.

It can be propagated by seed, stem cuttings, and has been cloned by micropropagation technique.

Sesquiterpene hydrocarbons were predominant, followed by oxygenated sesquiterpenes, and monoterpene hydrocarbons, diterpenes, and oxygenated monoterpenes. The major chemical constituents were found to be β-caryophyllene, β-elemene, farnesyl butanoate, myrcene, trans-nerolidol, and α-caryophyllene.

• The leaves are sometimes chewed as a cough remedy.
• A decoction of the boiled plant is used as a treatment for coughs.
• The fruits are considered to be an effective antifungal agent. They are used in the treatment of skin fungi. They are crushed and rubbed on facial dermatitis that consists of white spots.
• In Peninsular Malaysia, the plant is used externally for poulticing sore legs, and internally to treat diarrhoea.
• In Thailand, a decoction of the whole plant is considered diuretic and febrifugal.
• In Africa, leaves are eaten as a vegetable by barren women suffering from abdominal troubles and anaemia, and by convalescents to restore vigour and fecundity, it is also used in a bath to cure infants with fever, and to treat inflamed eyes.