Rabbit Meat

Overview

Alternanthera ficoidea is native to Tropical America, and introduced to Andaman Island, Assam, Bangladesh, Galápagos, India, Mexico, Nicobar Island, Queensland, and Vietnam. The edible leaves are used locally, being harvested from the wild and the ornamental garden. The plant is widely grown in the tropics as an ornamental and ground cover plant, especially the forms with variegated foliage. The densely matted growth makes it suitable to be used to protect soil against erosion. This weed can be used in herbal medicines and dietary supplements. 

Vernacular Names

Herbe à albumine (French), Abrojo (Spanish), Ceylongras (Dutch), Apaga-fogo (Brazillian).

Agroecology

Occurs in pastures, waste places, clearings, marshes, floodplain forests, low-lying croplands, ditches, sloughs and sluggish streams. Plants are hardy to about 1°C. Succeeds in full sun to partial shade. Prefers an organically rich, consistently moist, well-drained soil. Best foliage colors are usually developed in full sun, however some bleaching of colors may occur in full sun in hot summer climates.

Morphology

• Stem - stem and branches villous when young but soon glabrescent, older parts terete, younger bluntly quadrangular.
• Leaves - narrowly or more broadly elliptical to oblanceolate or rhomboid-ovate, acute to acuminate at the apex, attenuate into a slender, indistinctly demarcated petiole, thinly furnished with fine, whitish hairs to subglabrous, often reddish or purple suffused and not rarely variegated.
• Flower - inflorescences heads axillary, sessile, usually solitary, globose to ovoid, 4–6 mm in diameter, bracts pale, deltoid-ovate, 2 mm long, glabrous, lacerate-margined, aristate with the excurrent midrib; bracteoles similar but slightly shorter. Tepals white, lanceolate to oblong-elliptic, 3.5–4 mm long, acute, mucronate with the excurrent midrib, outer 2 prominently 3-nerved below and darker in the nerved area, with a line of whitish, minutely barbellate hairs on each side of this area, the hairs becoming denser towards the base of the tepal, inner 2 slightly shorter, narrower and less rigid, mostly 1–2-nerved; central tepal intermediate. Stamens 5, at anthesis much exceeding the ovary and style, the alternating pseudostaminodes subequalling the filaments plus anthers, narrowly oblong, laciniate at the apex. Pistil: Ovary strongly compressed, obpyriform, 0.6 mm long, style about the same length.

Cultivation

Generative propagation is by seed, and vegative propagation is by tip cutting.

Chemical Constituents

 Tannins, saponins, phytols, carotenoids, xanthophylls and polyphenols.

Traditional Medicinal Uses

• It is used in local medicine in Taiwan, often in mixtures with other medicinal plants, to treat hepatitis, tight chest, bronchitis, asthma and other lung troubles, to stop bleeding and as a hair tonic.
• It possess antitumor and anti-inflammatory activities.