Botany
Agoago is a strong and gray parasitic plant with terete branches. Leaves are rarely opposite, petioled, elliptic-oblong or lanceolate, rarely obovate, 5 to 20 cm long, 2.5 to 12 cm wide, with a pointed or nearly obtuse apex. Flowers are densely crowded, scurfy, axillary with very short racemes, about 1.5 cm long. Bracts are capsular. Calyx tube is cylindrical to urceolate, 1.5 to 2 mm long, with a 5-toothed calyx-limb. Corolla is straight, with the tube dilated below and equally 5-cleft at the middle, with linear and pointed lobes. Fruid is oblong-ovoid, 10 mm long, 6 mm wide.

Distribution
Found on trees at low and medium altitudes in Zambales Province, Luzon; and in Palawan.
Also occurs from India to southern China and southward to Sumatra, Java and Borneo.

Parts utilized
Bark, leaves.

Properties and constituents
• Stem contains a glucoside, quercitrine.
• Wax, on saponification, yields mellissyl alcohol.

Uses
Folkloric
• Poultice of pounded leaves used for small sores and ulcers.
• In Perak decoction of leaves used after childbirth as protective medicine.
• In Thailand, leaves used for hypertension.

Studies
• Antihypertensive: Study of an aqueous extract of Loranthus pentandrus in 15 Sprague-Dawley rats with induced-hypertension showed an antihypertensive effect. One possible mechanism of its effect was
a negative cardiac chronotropic effect.

Availability
Wild-crafted.

Additional Sources and Suggested Readings
(1)
Antihypertensive effect of Loranthus pentandrus L. in renovascular hypertensive rats. / Kukongviriyapan, U., V. Kukongviriyapan, and O. Pasurivong / Can. J. Physiol. Pharmacol. 72:P134, 1994.