The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Cullen corylifolium
Also called Scurfy Pea, Blackdot, Indian Bread Root
Malaysian scurfpea (Cullen corylifolium, also called Psoralea corylifolia) is a small annual herb in the pea family, grown mainly for its medicinal seeds rather than as an ornamental. Sources describe it as an annual reaching 50 to 90 cm with pale purple flowers and fragrant glands on its leaves and stems.
Cullen corylifolium, synonym Psoralea corylifolia, (babchi) is a plant used in Indian and Chinese traditional medicine. The seeds of this plant contain a variety of coumarins, including psoralen.
Used as a dietary supplement, Cullen corylifolium is of no clinical benefit and can cause potentially fatal herb-induced liver injury.
Cullen corylifolium is native to north-east tropical Africa, the southern Arabian Peninsula, and tropical and subtropical Asia, including India and Sri Lanka. It was occasionally cultivated in Arabia for its supposed medicinal properties.
Cullen corylifolium (bu gu zhi 补骨脂 in traditional Chinese medicine) is an herb intended as a therapy for several disorders, such as attempted treatment of lichen planus by psoralen extract combined with sunlight exposure. Mostly as an oral formulation, it is also used in Ayurveda to treat skin disorders, such as psoriasis, vitiligo or leprosy.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Cullen corylifolium by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
