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BOTANY
Ampalaya is a climbing vine, nearly or quite smooth, annual vine. Tendrils are
simple, up to 20 centimeters long. Leaves are 2.5 to 10 centimeters in
diameter, cut nearly to the base into 5 to 7 lobes, oblong-ovate, variously
toothed, and heart-shaped at the base. Male flower is about 12 millimeters
long, and is peduncled, with a rounded, green, and about 1 centimeter long
bract approximately at the middle. Female flower is yellow flower, about 15
millimeters long, long-stalked with pair of small leaflike bracts at middle or
toward base of stalk. Fruit, in cultivated form, is green, fleshy, oblong,
cylindric, 15 to 25 centimeters long, pointed at both ends, ribbed and
wrinkled, bursting when mature to release seeds; in wild forms, ovoid, about
2 to 4 centimeters long. Seeds are oblong, compressed 10 to 13 millimeters
long, and corrugated on the margins.
DISTRIBUTION
- Year-round vegetable, extensively cultivated in the Philippines for its bitter
edible fruit.
- Wild forms found in open fields, thickets, and waste places at low and
medium altitudes. (See: Ampalayang ligaw)
- Probably of Asiatic origin.
- Pantropic.
CONSTITUENTS
- Phytochemical study yielded alkaloids, glycosides, aglycone, tannin, sterol,
phenol and protein.
- 1898 study reported a bitter alkaloid and a glucoside.
- Leaves and fruit yielded a bitter principle, momordicin.
- A petroleum ether extractive yielded a highly aromatic ethereal oil, a fixed
oil, traces of free fatty acids and carotene.
- Ethyl ether fraction yielded chlorophyll, a glucoside-like substance and
resin.
- Water soluble extractive yielded a saponin-like substance and mucilaginous
bodies.
PROPERTIES
PARTS UTILIZED
Leaves, roots and fruits.
USES
Edibility / Nutritional
- Both wild and cultivated forms are edible.
- Fruit of wild form usually roasted over fire and eaten with salt or "heko."
- The leaves and fruit - used as vegetables - are excellent sources of Vit B,
iron, calcium, and phosphorus. It has twice the amount of beta carotene in
broccoli and twice the calcium content of spinach. Characteristically bittertasting, slight soaking in salty water before cooking removes some of the
bitter taste of the fruit.
- In India, fruit eaten in curries.
Folkloric
- In the Philippines, juice expressed from the green fruit is given for chronic
colitis: also used for bacillary dysentery.
- Astringent powdered leaves or root decoction can be applied to
hemorrhoids.
- Leaf juice for cough and as a purgative and anthelminthic to expel intestinal
parasites, and for healing wounds.
- Seeds also used to expel worms.
- The vine or the juice of leaves used as mild purgative for children.
- In large doses, the fresh juice is a drastic purgative.
- Decoction of roots and seeds used for urethral discharges.
- Juice of leaves used for chronic coughs.
- Leaves and shoots used as vulnerary.
- Sap of leaves used as parasiticide.