| Botany
Small tree growing 5 to
12 meters high. Leaves are pinnate, 20-60 cm long, with hairy rachis
and leaflets. Leaflets are opposite, 10 to 17 pairs, oblong, 5 to 10
cm in length. Flowers, about 1.5 cm long, and slightly fragrant. Fruit,
green and edible, about 4 cm long, subcylindric with 5 obscure, broad,
rounded, longitudinal lobes.
Distribution
Cultvated and semi-cultivated
throughout the Philippines.
Parts
utilized
Whole plant.
Properties
Coonsidered antibacterial, astringent, antiscorbutic, febrifuge, antidiabetic,
stomachic, refrigerant.
Uses
Nutrition
Eaten raw.
Prepared as a relish and food flavoring.
Folkloric
· Skin diseases,
especially with pruritus: Reduce the leaves to a paste and apply tolerably
warm to areas of affected skin.
· Fruit juice used as eye drops.
· Post-partum and rectal inflammation: Infusion of leaves.
· Mumps, acne, and localized rheumatic complaints: Paste of leaves
applied to affected areas.
· Warm paste of leaves also used for pruritus.
· Used for boils, piles, rheumatism, cough, hypertension, whooping
cough, mumps and pimples.
· Cough and thrush: Infusion of flowers, 40 grams to a pint of
boiling water, 4 glasses of tea daily.
· Fever: Fruit as a cooling drink.
· The fruit has been used for a variety of maladies: beriberi,
cough, prevention of scurvy.
· Infusion of leaves also drank as a protective tonic after childbirth.
- In Malaysia, leaves are used for venereal
diseases.
· In Indonesia, leaves used for
boils, diabetes, mumps, fever.
· In French Guyana, fruit decoction or syrup use for hepatitis,
diarrhea, fever and other inflammatory conditions.
Others
· Because of high
oxalic acid content, fruit used to remove stains from clothing and for
washing hands, removing rust and stains from metal blades.
Studies
• Effects of Averrhoa bilimbi leaf extract
on blood glucose and lipids in streptozotocin-diabetic rats:
Study showed that AB extract
has hypoglycemic, hypotriglyceridemic, anti-lipid peroxidative and anti-atherogenic
properties in STZ-diabetic rats.
• Antioxidant And Antimicrobial
Activities Of Averrhoa carambola L. Fruits: The scavenging
of NO by the extract was dependent on concentration and stage of ripening.
Extracts showed antimicrobial activity against E coli, Salmonella typhi,
staph aureus and bacillus cereus.
Availability
Wildcrafted.
Seasonal fruiting.
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