Asian Spider Flower
Genus: Cleome
Botanical name: Cleome viscosa
PLANT NAME IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES
Sanskrit: Pasugandha
Hindi: Hulhul, Hurhur
English: Asian spider flower, Yellow spider flower, Cleome, Tickweed, Wild mustard, Cleome, Sticky cleome
Malayalam: Aatunarivela, Vela, Naivela, Aryavela
MEDICINAL PROPERTIES
Asian spider flower is a usually tall annual herb, up to a meter high, more or less hairy with glandular and eglandular hairs. Leaves are digitately compound, with 3-5 leaflets. Leaflets are obovate, elliptic-oblong, very variable in size, often 2-4 cm long, 1.5-2.5 cm broad, middle one largest; petiole up to 5 cm long. Racemes elongated, up to 30 cm long, with corym¬bose flowers at the top and elongated mature fruits below, bracteate. Flowers 10-15 mm across, whitish or yellowish; pedicels 6-20 mm long; bracts foliaceous. Sepals oblong-lanceolate, 3-4 mm long, 1-2 mm wide, glandular-pubescent. Petals 8-15 mm long, 2-4 mm broad, oblong-obovate. Stamens 10-12 (rarely more, up to 20), not exceeding the petals; gynophore absent. Fruit 30-75 mm long, 3-5 mm broad, linear-oblong, erect, obliquely striated, tapering at both ends, glandular-pubescent, slender; style 2-5 mm long; seeds many, 1-1.4 mm in diam., glabrous with longitudinal striations and transverse ridges, dark brown.
The whole plants of Asian spider flower intestinal worms, colic, stomach upset, cardio myopathy, diarrhea, fever, inflammatins, liver diseases, bronchitis and dyspepsia.