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12(2): Medicinal and poisonous plants 2

Acalypha hellwigii Warb.

This article should be read together with the article on the genus: Acalypha in the Handbook volume indicated above in this database.

Bot. Jahrb. 18: 198 (1894).

Acalypha scandens Warb. (1891) non Benth. (1854).

Papua New Guinea: bluwa (Buang, Morobe Province).

Sulawesi and New Guinea.

In Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea, leaves are used to hold a strongly heated quartz pebble and water is directed onto a sore through a funnel of leaves. The leaves are also used as cigarette wrapper, or smoked as such. The timber is locally used for house construction.

A scrambling climber, sprawling shrub or tree up to 5 m tall; leaves narrowly ovate to elliptical, margins sharply serrate, stiff coriaceous, penninerved, petiole short; female inflorescence rather lax-flowered, up to 25 cm long with short 7—11 toothed bracts. New Guinea material is sometimes erroneously identified as Acalypha insulana Müll. Arg., a very similar yet distinct species from Fiji. Acalypha hellwigii is exceedingly variable and found on a wide range of soils in habitats ranging from strand vegetation, secondary scrub to primary forest from sea-level up to 2500 m altitude.

[33] Airy Shaw, H.K., 1980. The Euphorbiaceae of New Guinea. Kew Bulletin Additional Series VIII. Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, United Kingdom. 243 pp.
[35] Airy Shaw, H.K., 1982. The Euphorbiaceae of Central Malesia (Celebes, Moluccas, Lesser Sunda Is.). Kew Bulletin 37: 1—40.
[436] Holdsworth, D.K. & Sakulas, H., 1987. Medicinal plants of the Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. Part IV. The Snake River Valley. International Journal of Crude Drug Research 25(4): 204—208.

Arbayah H. Siregar

Siregar, A.H., 2001. Acalypha hellwigii Warb.. In: van Valkenburg, J.L.C.H. and Bunyapraphatsara, N. (Editors): Plant Resources of South-East Asia No 12(2): Medicinal and poisonous plants 2. PROSEA Foundation, Bogor, Indonesia. Database record: prota4u.org/prosea