Crotalaria quinquefolia L.

Crotalaria quinquefolia is an erect annual herb up to 2 meters tall from the Fabaceae family, a weed spread from India to Australia. Its leaves are often combined with Crotalaria retusa as a traditional fever reducer, while its seeds are used to treat snake and millipede bites. Its bark is also a good fiber source, and its steamed flowers can be eaten as a vegetable.

Crotalaria quinquefolia usually grows as a weed in fields, especially wet rice fields and humid places, also found in open forests, swamps, along roadsides, old fields, and dump sites, at elevations up to 900 m asl. This plant prefers a sunny position under sunlight, with dry to moist soil conditions, and well-drained.

• Roots taproot.
• Stem has angular grooved branches, greenish, thornless, hairy.
• Leaves alternate, palmately compound with five leaflets (5-foliolate), stipules crescent-shaped, blade linear-oblong, smooth margin, hairless on the upper surface, hairy on the lower surface, long petiole.
• Flowers have a yellow corolla, with pink-purple veins, larger than the calyx, with an almost round, beaked blade. Calyx hairless, half the length of the corolla. Stamens numbering ten, anthers at two different levels (alternating long and short filaments), filaments united in an open sheath. Inflorescence a terminal raceme.
• Fruit a cylindrical pod, large, about 7 cm long and 2 cm in diameter, hairless, brown, each fruit containing up to 30 seeds. The fruit swells, and when ripe the loose seeds rattle inside.
• Seeds kidney-shaped (reniform), about 4 mm × 3.5 mm, brownish.

• Propagation generatively (seeds).
• Soaking seeds for 12 hours in warm water can help reduce germination time.

Pyrrolizidine alkaloid, monocrotaline.

Treats snake and millipede bites, fever, scabies, impetigo, and lung diseases.

No information found. Further research needed.