Botany
Kitkitli is a small hairy tuberous plant. Rootstock is rounded or cylindrical, erect, 2.5 cm long or more, and crowned with the fibrous remains of old leaves. Leave are slender and grasslike, narrowly linear, 10 to 20 cm long and 2 to 3 mm wide. Flowers are solitary or paried, golden-yellow. Scape is 2.5 to 10 cm long, slender, filiform, and hairy. Perianth-lobes are elliptic-lanceolate, 8 to 12 mm long, yellow, and green on the back. Capsules are 6 to 12 mm long, clavate, at length 3-valved, crowned with the erect perianth-lobes. Seeds are black, and tuberculate.
Distribution
- In open grasslands at medium and higher altitudes, ascending to 2,300 meters in Bontoc, Benquet, and Nueva Ecija Provinces in Luzon, and in Lanao and Bukidnon Provinces in Mindanao.
- Also occurs in India and Japan and southward to Java.
Properties
Rootstock swell in water and is mucilaginous.
It has small starch grains and bundles of raphides.
Reconstructive, rejuvenating, aphrodisiac and tonic.
Uses
Folkloric
Similar to ginseng, used as reconstructive, rejuvenating, aphrodisiac and tonic.
In China, used to treat hernias, and to warm the kidney.
Studies
• Phenolic Glycosides: Study of rhizomes isolated two new phenolic glycosides, aureaside A and B, together with seven known compounds
Availability
Wild-crafted.
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