Tragia benthamii
Tragia benthamii
Safety & Hazards
The plant is covered with stinging hairs. The sting can be very painful, and the pain is said to last about ten minutes[ 332 Title The Useful Plants of West Tropical Africa. Publication Author Burkil. H. M. Publisher Royal Botanic Gardens; Kew. Year 1985 - 2004 ISBN Description Brief descriptions and details of the uses of over 4,000 plants. A superb, if terse, resource, it is also available electronically on the Web - see http://www.aluka.org/ ]. The plant enters into criminal use in Cote D'Ivoire, being used in a mixture of crushed glass and other drug-plants known as gou-ga[ 332 Title The Useful Plants of West Tropical Africa. Publication Author Burkil. H. M. Publisher Royal Botanic Gardens; Kew. Year 1985 - 2004 ISBN Description Brief descriptions and details of the uses of over 4,000 plants. A superb, if terse, resource, it is also available electronically on the Web - see http://www.aluka.org/ ].
Botanical Description
Tragia benthamii is usually a straggling or climbing plant, or rarely an erect shrub; it has more or less woody stems that can be 1 - 4.5 metres long. The plant is covered with stinging hairs[ 299 Title Protabase - Plant Resources of Tropical Africa. Publication Author Website http://www.prota.org Publisher Year 0 ISBN Description An excellent on-line database with detailed information on over 3,200 species of useful plants of Africa. ]. The plant is harvested from the wild for local use as a medicine.