Green suji leaves

Overview

It is a native shrub or small tree in southern Taiwan, widely planted in Australia, India, Malaysia, and Philippines. It has air purifying qualities for removing harmful pollutants in the air, making it suitable as an indoor or outdoor plant. In some places, used for ceremonial, ritual, in ceremonies of worship, plants placed in the altar.

Vernacular Names

Suji (Malaysia), Meng la long xue shu (Chinese), Bois chandelle (French).

Agroecology

It will grow in warm subtropical or tropical climates. Found in forests and thickets. Need very drained soils and requires sunny or half- shaded locations. This plant has tolerated temperatures down to subzero.

Morphology

• Stems - simple or few branched, greyish and smooth. Internodes often longer than wide.
• Leaves - spirally arranged, spaced along distal part of stems, sessile, subsessile or indistinctly petiolate. Blade, fleshy, sword-shaped to linear-oblanceolate.
• Flowers - arranged in clusters of 2 or 3(-4), perianth greenish white, lobes of the perianth 6, 10-16 mm long. Filaments filiform, anthers 2- 3 mm long. Style 5-8 as long as ovary.
• Fruits - orange, globose, 8-12 mm in diameter, flesh thin orange and contain 1-2 seeds.
• Seeds - large (12 mm), translucent cream.

Cultivation

• By seeds - best results are obtained with fresh seed as seeds lose viability when stored.
• Plant the seeds in shallow containers in a quick draining mixture and cover the seeds with green sphagnum moss. Remove most of the moss when the seeds begin to germinate. The seeds germinate in 2 to to 6 months.
• By cuttings off the top. Snip it just below the leaf line and be sure to include at least one node, roots grow from these round, white bumps on the stem.

Chemical Constituents

• Flavonoid, polifenol, tanin, steroid, saponin (drangustosides A–B and alliospiroside A), alkaloid, hydrocarbons, palmitic acid, linolenic acid, stearic acid, diterpene, neophytadiene and phytol.

Traditional Medicinal Uses

• The root is effective in treating stomachache while its leaves are used for anti-inflammatory and anti-dysentry.
• Suji roots and rhizomes are used as tonic and leukemia treatment.
• The juice squeezed from the boiled leaves is drunk as a remedy for asthma and shortness of breath.
• A decoction of the leaves is given to people suffering weight loss and poor appetite.
• Leaves poultice applied on swelling of joint.
• Roots juice given in jaundice.
• A decoction of its roots mixed with other ingredients given as a postpartum remedy.
• In the Moluccas a decoction of the roots is used to treat gonorrhoea, the leaves are applied externally to treat beri-beri and the leaf-sap to promote hair growth.