Baby Jump Up

Overview

Mecardonia procumbens is native from the southern USA to Argentina but is already recorded as naturalised in Africa, India, Indonesia (Java), Japan and Taiwan. It has become naturalised across much of the warmer parts of the world. Common weed of lawns, gardens and agriculture. In Mexico, the plant is traditionally used to heal all kinds of wounds. This ethnobotanical application is repeated until the wound is healed completely.

Vernacular Names

Metatera (Mexican).

Agroecology

Found in riparian, shaded open, moist woodland edges. 

Morphology

• Root - short fibrous roots.
• Stem - erect or prostrate glabrous ephemeral herb, often branched from the base, rooting at lower nodes. Stem sharply quadrangular and glabrous.
• Leaves - light green, fleshy, opposite, toothed, and have pinnate venation, glabrous, without or with short petioles, elliptic to ovate-elliptic, 10-25 x 6-12 mm.
• Flowers - yellow, axillary, solitary; pedicel thin, glabrous, 4-6 mm long, bracts 2-4 mm long, linear, mostly entire, located at the base of the pedicel. Sepals free, with acute base, glabrous, 5 -lobed, 6-10 mm long; the 3 outer lobes ovate-oblong, attenuate at apex, subobtuse at base, 8.5 x 4.5 mm, the 2 inner ones shorter, 5 x 0.4 mm, much narrower. Stamens 4, didynamous, partly adnate to floral tube. Ovary superior, narrowly ovoid; curved at apex. corolla bilabiate, yellow with purple lines on upper lip, slightly longer than the calyx, 7-7.5 x 6 mm; upper lip emargenate, tube 5-5.5 x 2-4 mm. 
• Fruit - capsule obscured by persistent sepals, narrowly ellipsoid, with 2 valves, glabrous, 5-6 mm long, dehiscent loculicidally and septicidally from apex, calyx accrescent, the outer sepals becoming 9 mm long and 5 mm wide.
• Seeds - numerous, areolate-reticulate, yellow or greenish brown, oblong with obtuse or truncate apex and subobtuse base, 0.3-0.8 x 0.2 mm long.

Cultivation

Generatively propagated by seed.

Chemical Constituents

No found data on this. Need further research.

Traditional Medicinal Uses

• Plant acts as neuro-stimulant and brain stimulant.
• The plant is used to heal all kinds of wounds. The whole plant is boiled in one liter or water. The infusion water is taken while the wound is external, the affected part is also washed and the boiled plant is placed in a compress and applied externally.