Cissampelos pareira
English: Velvetleaf; False Pareira; Abuta.
French: Feuille de Velous, Herbe des Sages-Femmes.
Spanish: Bejunco de Cerca, Butua.
Chinese: Xí shēng téng.
India: Laghu patha, in Ayurvedic medicine.
Use: arrow poisoning for hunting; forage for their cattle; medicinal.
Region: pantropical.
Habitat: shrubland; rainforest, coastal evergreen bushland, deciduous bushland, in secondary vegetatio, near rock outcrops, on cleared ground, in plantations; elevations up to 2,300 metres
Content: hayatinine, similar to tubocurarine, has neuro-muscular blocking activities; cycleanine, inhibitor of nitric oxide production in macrophages.
Botany
Herbaceous, perennial climbing plant; stems twining from a large, underground tuber; root is very bitter.
Slender tomentose climber, or scandent shrub.
Leaves: peltate, ± 8 cm long, ± 6 cm broad, triangularly broad-ovate, or orbicular, obtuse, mucronate, base cordate or truncate, ± tomentose on both sides; petiole pubescent.
Flower: small, pedicels filiform.
Male flowers: clustered in the axil of a small leaf; sepals 4, obovate-oblong, hairy outside; petals 4, united in a 4-toothed cup, hairy outside. stamens 4, column short, anthers connate, encircling the top of the column.
Female flowers: clustered in the axils of orbicular, hoary imbricate bracts, on 5–10 cm long racemes; sepal 1, petal 1; carpel 1, densely hairy; style shortly 3-fid.
Fruit a drupe 4–6 mm long, 3–4 mm broad, subglobose, compressed, hairy-pubescent, red when fresh, black when dry, endocarp transversely ribbed, tuberculate. Seeds are horseshoe-shaped.