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Spigelia anthelmia
Also called Pink Weed, West Indian Pink, Wormbush, Wormgrass, Worm Grass
In Singapore: West Indian Pinkroot, Wormbush (Naturalised in Singapore)
West Indian pinkroot is a small annual herb from tropical America, grown mainly as an ornamental or medicinal plant. It is grown from seed in warm, seasonally dry conditions and is best kept away from children and pets because it is highly poisonous.
Spigelia anthelmia, the West Indian pinkroot, wormbush, or wormgrass, is a species of flowering plant in the family Loganiaceae. It is native to Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Florida, and northern South America through to Bolivia and Brazil, and it has been widely introduced to other tropical locales, including western and west-central Africa, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Hainan, and the Bismarck Archipelago. Highly poisonous, it is used as a vermifuge against intestinal worms.
It spreads its seeds through explosive dehiscence. The seeds are usually thrown more than 1 meter away.
Spigelia anthelmia contains spiganthine, actinidine, isoquinoline, cholines, flavonoids, tertiary alkaloids (like strychnine) and quaternary alkaloids (like ryanodine). Symptoms of ingesting Spigelia anthelmia can include dim vision, face and eye muscle spasms, lightheadedness, and convulsions. It can be fatal to children.
Due to its toxicity, it is traditionally used as a vermifuge against intestinal worms. Experiments show that Spigelia anthelmia has been found to decrease the number of worms with increasing dose in trials of rats against Nippostronglylus brasiliensis.
[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Spigelia anthelmia 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.
