Takip-kohol – Scientific name: Centella asiatica L.
English: Indian hydocotyle
Tagalog: Takip-kohol
A prostrate, creeping sparingly hairy or nearly smooth herb. The stems rooting at the nodes.
Leaves: rounded to reniform, 2 to 5 cm wide, horizontal, more or less cupped, rounded at the tip, and kidney-shaped or heart-shaped at the base, palmately veined, scalloped margins, the rounded lobes often overlapping. Petioles erect, 3 to 20 cm and long.
Flowers: petals dark-purple, ovate, and about 1 long. Peduncles occur in pairs or threes, less than 1 cm long and usually bear 3 sessile flowers. Flowering October to May.
Fruits: minute, ovoid, white or green, and reticulate, each with 9 subsimilar longitudinal ridges
5 carpels, cylindric compressed, about 2.5 mm long, white or green, reticulate. Ovary inferior. Stamens 5, epigynous.
Distribution
Found in gardens; open, damp grasslands on rice paddy banks and streams throughout the Philippines.
Parts utilized
Entire plant.
Gather drug material anytime of the year.
Constituents
Bitter principle, vellarin; pectic acid.
Chemical analysis of the plant shows the presence of vallarine, high vitamin B content in the leaves and roots, and a miscellany of other constituents such as carbohydrates, resins, proteins, ash, alkali, alkaline salts, phosphates, and tannins.
Medicinal uses
Infectious hepatitis, measles, respiratory tract infections – colds, tonsillitis, laryngopharyngitis, bronchitis.
Fresh material: 60 to 260 gms, dried material: 30 to 60 gms: Take in form of decoction.
Counterirritant: Pound fresh leaves, mix with vaseline or oil and apply over affected area as poultice.
