Names: Sambañganai.
Botany: dioecious vine with branches smooth, terete, 2 to 4 millimetrs in diameter; leaves leathery, oblong-elliptic or rounded-ovate, ± 15 cm long, ± 6 cm wide, 5 to 7 plinerved, smooth on both surfaces; pistillate spikes are pendulous, ± 7 cm cm long, ± 1 cm diameter; bracts smooth, conate to the rachis, their ends fusing, forming the cupular receptacles; fruits globose, borne on the cupular receptacles, ± 5 cm millimeters long, 5 millimeters in diameter; stigmas 3 to 4, slightly hairy and rounded; cupular receptacle sessile to subsessile, stout, smooth outside, smooth to ciliate on the rim, pilose inside; staminate spikes pendulous, slender, ± 5 cm long, ± 2 millimeters diameter; stamens 5, small, sunk in the cupular receptacle, very small, ovoid to subglobose, bilocular, 2-valved anthers, filaments oblong, swollen at the base, slightly longer than the anthers.
Region: Philippines; Borneo and Java.
Use: folkloric Roots, leaves, stems.
Content: antioxidants; 2 phenolic amides, more effective than naturally occurring alpha-tocopherol.
DD:
Piper cubeba.