9. Crescentia cujete
English name: Beggar’s bowl
Kannada name: Sanyasi bakkare
Classification:
Kingdom: Plantae
Class: Lamiales
Family: Bignoniaceae
Genus: Crescentia
Species: cujete
Taxonomic description:
The calabash tree grows to 30 feet often with multiple trunks. The rangy twisting branches have simple elliptical leaves clustered at the nodes. The greenish-yellow flowers are marked with purple veins. The flowers arise from the trunk or main branches and appear from May through January. The woody fruit, botanically a capsule, is elliptic, ovate, or spherical and may grow to 10 inches in diameter. The fruit takes up to seven months to ripen.
Uses: Not known about fruits eaten as such, but definitely used in medicine as diuretic, asperient and febrifuge. The fruit shell takes a fine polish and used like a utensil. Sap was earlier used to dye silk black. Seeds yield an oil similar to groundnut oil.
Fibers from the calabash tree were twisted into twine and ropes. The hard wood made tools and tool handles. The split wood was woven for sturdy baskets. But it was the calabash's gourd-like fruit that made the plant truly useful. Large calabashes were used as bowls and, peculiarly, to disguise the heads of hunters.
10. Cissus quadrangularis
English name: Devil's backbone/ Adamant creeper
Kannada name: Sanduballi
Classification:
Kingdom: Plantae
Class: Vitales
Family: Vitaceae
Genus: Cissus
Species: quadrangularis
Taxonomic description:
Cissus quadrangularis reaches a height of 1.5 m and has quadrangular-sectioned branches with internodes 8 to 10 cm long and 1.2 to 1.5 cm wide. Along each angle is a leathery edge. Toothed trilobe leaves 2 to 5 cm wide appear at the nodes. Each has a tendril emerging from the opposite side of the node.Racemes of small white, yellowish, or greenish flowers; globular berries are red
when ripe.
Uses:
Cissus quadrangularis is used for obesity, diabetes, a cluster of heart disease risk factors called “metabolic syndrome,” and high cholesterol. It has also been used for bone fractures, weak bones (osteoporosis), scurvy, cancer, upset stomach, hemorrhoids, peptic ulcer disease (PUD), painful menstrual periods, asthma, malaria, and pain. Cissus quadrangularis is also used in bodybuildingsupplements as an alternative to anabolic steroids.
