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Melastoma affine is a shrub to about 2 m tall from tropical and subtropical forests, grown as a fast-growing, adaptable plant in cultivation. It is best grown in a sunny or lightly shaded spot in moist, well-drained soil.
Melastoma affine, also known by the common names blue tongue, straits rhododendron or native lassiandra, is a shrub of the family Melastomataceae. Distributed in tropical and sub-tropical forests of the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and Australia, it is a plant of rainforest margins. Bees are the principal pollinators of this species.
A fast-growing and adaptable shrub, Melastoma affine is sometimes seen in cultivation. It can be propagated by seed or cuttings.
The plant is used to make grass jelly (cincau perdu) in Indonesia. The fruits ripen to dark gray, and contain an edible purple pulp around the seeds. It stains the mouth black (hence the name of the genus). Sap or an extract from the leaves is used as a herbal medicine against a number of conditions including diarrhoea, burns, ulcers, wounds, piles and thrush in Indonesia and the Solomon Islands.
Melastoma affine is found from the Indian subcontinent through Southeast Asia, Malaysia, Indonesia and into Australia. Within Australia, it is found from the Kimberleys in Western Australia, across the Northern Territory and Queensland, and reaches as far south as Kempsey on the New South Wales mid north coast. It grows in wet areas in sclerophyll forest.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Melastoma affine 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.
