Morinda citrifolia L.
ചെറുമഞ്ഞണാത്തി


Family: RUBIACEAE
Sub-Family: Not available
English Name: Great Morinda
Synonym: Morinda bracteata Roxb.
Common Name: Kattapitalavam, Indian Mulberry
Flowering & Fruiting Period: July-November
Distribution: Indo-Malesia to Australia
Habitat: Waste places and mangrove forests
Uses: The unripe fruit is used in Indian cooking in sambals and curries. The ripe fruit is made into a beverage with sugar or syrup. The roots are febrifuge, tonic and antiseptic. An infusion of the root is used in treating urinary disorders. The wilted or heated leaf is applied as a poultice to painful swellings in order to bring relief. A poultice of the leaves is applied to wounds or to the head in order to relieve headaches. The fruits are used as a diuretic, a laxative, an emollient and as an emmenagogue, for treating asthma and other respiratory problems, as a treatment for arthritic and comparable inflammations, in cases of leucorrhoea and sapraemia and for maladies of the inner organs.
Key Characteristics: Evergreen shrubs or small crooked trees, 3-8 m high. Leaves simple, opposite, elliptic-lanceolate. Flowers bisexual, fragrant, in dense globose heads. Calyx tube hemispheric. Corolla funnel-shaped. Stamens 5, inserted on the mouth of the corolla. Ovary 2-celled; stigma bilobed. Fruit an ovoid syncarp of pyramidal, 2-seeded drupes.