author(s) : Faiza M. Hammouda, Husseiny A. H. Elgendy, Ibrahim A. El-Garf and Abdel-Fattah M. Rizk
Synonym
- Pistia stratiotes L., Sp. Pl., ed. 1, 963 (1753); Boulos, Fl. Egypt 4: 109 (2005)Names: Water cabbage, water lettuce, Nile cabbage, shellflower
family name
ARACEAE
genus name
Pistia
Nutritive Constituents: Earlier preliminary investigation of the aquatic plant called “water pansy” or “Madagascar pansy” (Pistia aegyptiaca Schleid = Pistia stratiotes L.) revealed that the leaves and roots contain water 90.15,80; organic matter 7.5, 12.31; minerals 2.35, 7.69% respectively. Dry matter contained N 2.39% and 2.27% for leaves and roots respectively ..
The plant is cooling, demulcent and is applied to boils, syphilitic eruptions and inmany skin complaints.
The leaves are diuretic and are prescribed in diseases of urinary tractand haemorrhoids.
The ashes are applied to ringworm of scalp (Kirtikar and Basu, 1984).
Traditionally, the plant is used as bitter, cooling agent, laxative useful for curing fever, blooddiseases and tuberculosis (Kumar et al., 2010).
In Bangladesh, it used to treat tuberculosis(Rahman et al., 2009).
In Pakistan, the leaves are used as anti-arthritis, anti-inflammatoryand a curative of skin disease (Ikram et al., 2014).
The plant is used in Nigeria for the…
Few pharmacological or biological test reports have been reported on this plant in the literature like chloroform methanolic and ethanolic extracts of entire plant shows antibacterial activity, methanolic extracts of entire plant possess bronchodilator, neuromuscular blocking activity, antioxidant activity. Petroleum ether, methanolic and aqueous extracts of leaves shows anticrustacean activity (Kumar et al., 2015).
The alcoholic extract of the plant and compouds (1-3), isolated from the plant growing in Egypt, exhibited in vitro cytotoxic activity using two proliferating mouse cell lines, a normal fibrolast line NIH3T3 and virally transformed forms KA3IT (Ayyad, 2001).
The cytotoxicity of the chloroform and aqueous extracts on larvae of Culex mosquito was also reported (Mukhtar et al., 2004).
location
egypt