Sauropus androgynus (Linnaeus) Merrill

Sauropus androgynus is widely cultivated. The leaves are used as a medicine for coughs and to soothe the lungs, as a tonic, and as a febrifugal to relieve internal fever; they are also used as a vegetable ("Sweet Leaf Bush").

Shrubs 1-3 m tall, erect, monoecious, glabrous throughout; branchlets angular when young, terete with age, slender, green. Stipules lanceolate or linear-lanceolate, 1.5-3 mm; petiole 2-4 mm; leaf blade ovate-lanceolate, oblong-lanceolate, or lanceolate, 3-10 × 1.5-3.5 cm, submembranous or thinly papery, base cuneate, rounded, or truncate, apex acuminate; venation pinnate, lateral veins 5-7 pairs, elevated abaxially, flattened adaxially, reticulate veins obscure. Inflorescence axillary, 1- or 2-flowered, or several male and female per cluster. Male flowers: pedicels slender, 5-7.5 mm; calyx shallowly disk-shaped, 5-12 mm in diam., shallowly 6-fid; sepals obovate; disk segments 6, opposite to sepals, incurved distally, covering anthers; stamens 3; fila-ments connate; anthers extrorse. Female flowers usually solitary, axillary; pedicel 6-8 mm; calyx red, 6-lobed; sepals obovate or obovate-triangular, 5-6 × 3-5.5 mm, base attenuate into a short claw; disk absent; ovary depressed globose, ca. 0.7 × 1.5 mm, 3-locular; styles 3, bifid. Fruiting pedicel 0.5-1 cm; persistent calyx red; capsule white, depressed globose or globose, ca. 1.2 × 1.7 cm, thinly crustaceous. Seeds black, triquetrous, ca. 7 × 5 mm. Fl. Apr-Jul, fr. Jul-Dec.

India, Himalaya (Nepal, Sikkim), Ceylon, Tndo-China, S. China, W. Malaysia.

Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Yunnan [Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam].

4500-900 m

Slopes with brushwood, sunny forest margins; 100-400 m.

Clutia androgyna Linnaeus, Mant. Pl. 1: 128. 1767; Aalius androgyna (Linnaeus) Kuntze; A. retroversa (Wight) Kuntze; A. sumatrana (Miquel) Kuntze; Agyneia ovata Poiret; Andrachne ovata Lamarck ex Poiret; Phyllanthus strictus Roxburgh; Sauropus albicans Blume; S. albicans var. gardnerianus (Wight) Müller Argoviensis; S. albicans var. intermedius Müller Argoviensis; S. albicans var. zeylanicus (Wight) Müller Argoviensis; S. convexus J. J. Smith; S. gardnerianus Wight; S. indicus Wight; S. parviflorus Pax & K. Hoffmann; S. retroversus Wight; S. scandens C. B. Robinson; S. sumatranus Miquel; S. zeylanicus Wight.