General
info
Cycas, the single
genus of the family Cycadaceae, consists of about 100 species, chiefly
Indo-Chinese (40) and Australian (27).
Botany
Cycas rumphii is commonly confused
with Cycas revoluta, but pitogo is a much larger plant, with larger
leaves and smooth and glabrous ovules. Trunk is stout, growing to
a height of 12 meters, 20 to 50 centimeters in diameter, with a round and symmetrical
crown. Leaves are 1.5 to 2.5 meters long, crowded at the apex of the
trunk, leaflets are 20 to 30 centimeters long, about 1 centimeter wide, smooth and shining,
falcate, 45 to 90 on each side of the midrib. Male cones are terminal,
elongated-cylindric or ovoid-cylindric. Leaves are numerous, about
30 centimeters long and densely rusty-tomentose. Fruit is smooth, ovoid to ellipsoid,
3 to 5 centimeters long.
Distribution
- Found along or near
the seashore.
- Occasional growths in forests.
Constituents
- Toxicity from a
glucoside in the seeds, with phytosterine.
- The plant yields a resin that is used medicinally in India.
- Yields a gum resembling tragacanth.
Properties
- Male bracts believed to be narcotic, stimulant and aphrodisiac.
- Vulnerary.
Parts used
Fruit, seeds.
Uses
Edibility / Nutritional
- Ripe seeds are used
as food in times of famine. The untreated seeds may be poisonous.
- The starch from the trunk and seed is considered superior to Caryota
flour but inferior to rice flour.
- In some parts of the Philippines, the young leaves (still rolled up)
are cooked and eaten as vegetable.
Folkloric
- In India, resin is used for malignant
ulcers, facilitating suppuration.
- Male bracts used are a narcotic, stimulant and aphrodisiac.
- Powdered roasted whole seed is mixed with coconut oil and applied
to wounds, boils, itchy skin lesions.
- Poultice of fruit-bearing cone is applied to loins for nephritic pains.
- Tincture from pericarp of seed and bark is used for edematous swellings.
- Seeds are used for dizziness, headaches, and sore throats.
- Poultice of bark used for swellings.
- In Dutch East Indies, juice of young mucilaginous leaves used for flatulence and vomiting
of blood.
- In Bangladesh, used for gynecological disorders, sore throat, tuberculosis, pain.
Others
Leaves used in religious
ceremonies.
Toxicity
• Medical Hypothesis: Cycad neurotoxins and flying foxes connect:
Toxicity is due to a glucoside in the seeds, pakoein, with another cholesterine-like toxic substance, phytosterine.
Studies
•
Medical Hypothesis: Cycad neurotoxins and flying foxes connect:
The high incidence of neurodegenerative diseases (ALS-PDC) among the
Chamorro people of Guam is proposed as connected to the consumption
of flying foxes high on plant neurotoxins from its foraging on neurotoxic
cycad seeds.
• The cycad neurotoxic amino acid, ß-N-methylamino- -alanine
(BMAA), elevates intracellular calcium levels in dissociated rat brain
cells.
• Aromatase Inhibitors / Estrogen-Dependent Tumors:
In a study of tropical plants searching for inhibitors of the cytochrome P-450 aromatase which may be efficacious in treating estrogen-dependent tumors, extracts of 5 cycad folia, including Cycas rumphii, were all found to contain inhibitors of the human enzyme.
• Antibacterial: Study investigated the antibacterial potential of leaves of C. rumphii. Ethanol and methanol extracts showed maximum antibacterial activity against most of the bacteria tested.
• BMAA: BMAA is potentially neurotoxic. Studies have suggested the BMAA is not produced by the cycad itself by by the cyanobacteria present in the collaroid roots. A review supports a connection between cycad exposure and the development of ALS-PDC in Guam. B-methylaminoalanine (BMAA) is found in cycad. However, analytical methods have not been adequately validated. Still, human epidemiological data suggests the amount of BMAA in processed cycad flour is not enough to be the main cause of degenerative neurological disease after consumption of cycad flour.
Availability
Wildcrafted.
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