A herbaceous, tropical perennial plant, has a perennial rhizome, which is fibrous, producing numerous fusiform, fleshy, scaly, pendulous tubers from its crown. The stems are 2 or 3 feet high, much branched, slender, finely hairy, and tumid at the joints. The leaves are alternate, with long, leafy, hairy sheaths, ovate, lanceolate, slightly hairy underneath, and pale-green on both sides. The flowers are white, and disposed in a long, lax, spreading, terminal panicle, with long, linear, sheathing bracts, at the ramifications. The calyx is green and smooth; the corolla white, small, unequal with one of the inner segments in the form of a lip. The ovary is 3-celled and hairy. The fruit is nearly globular, with 3 obsolete angles, and the size of a small currant.

Alexeteric, antibilious, antipyretic, demulcent, depurative, hypocholesterolemic, rubefacient, vulnerary.

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Philippine Medicinal Plants

Ascorbic acid, beta-carotene, niacin, riboflavin, thiamin (root)

For convalescents, especially in bowel complaints, to wounds from poisoned arrows, scorpion and black spider bites, to arrest gangrene, for vegetable poisons, such as Savanna.