Pink Lady

Overview

Native to  Africa - Sierra Leone to Ethiopia, Angola, Zimbabwe and Mozambique to the south. In the tropics, it is commonly cultivated as an ornamental and ground cover herb.
 

Vernacular Names

Spanish Shawl, Rockrose, Creeping princess flower, Trailing Dissotis, Dwarf Tibouchina, Trailing Tibouchina.
 

Agroecology

Find in wet places in the forest-zone, preferring secondary jungle, usually found in second and third year bush fallows, old cultivated land, palm-plantations, swamps, watersides; grassland, up to 1,200 m elevations. A moist soil in a sunny or partly shaded location is preferred.

Morphology

• Stems - lightly to densely hirsute.
• Leaves - ovate-suborbicular to oblongovate or ovate-lanceolate lamina, acute apex, briefly attenuated base truncate, slightly crenulate-ciliate margin, slightly to densely pilose on both surfaces. Midrib and 1(-2) pairs of lightly impressed basal longitudinal leaves above, subprominent below, 0.5-2.5 cm long petiole.
• Flowers - Solitary, or occasionally 2-4-flowered, cymes; 5-merous flowers. Cylindricalcampanulate calyx-tube, 5-7 mm long, 3-4 mm in diameter, sparse to densely pilose, hair intermixed with 1-2 mm long linear-subulate caducous appendages and placed at the apex. Pink, obovate petals, 20 mm in length, 15 mm in width. Stamens 10, unequal; broad stamens with 7 mm long anthers, 6 mm developed connective, 1.5 mm long bilobed appendages.
   

Cultivation

• Propagated by plants.
• By separating rhizomes, tubers, corms or bulbs (including offsets).
• From cuttings of herbaceous stems.

Chemical Constituents

Flavonoids, phenols, polyphenols, alkaloids, tannins, cyanogenic glycosides and anthraquinones.

Traditional Medicinal Uses

• It uses the leaves as an anthelmintic.
• In order to cure many diseases such as dysentery, rheumatism, circulatory disorders, conjunctivitis, venereal disease, and hookworm infestation, the plant is used as a medicinal plant; it is often used to reduce miscarriages.
• The extract has been shown to contain compounds which are effective in destroying the parasite that causes African sleeping sickness, Trypanosoma brucei.