The root is used as a remedy for diarrhoea. The juice of the bark is used in urinary troubles, irritation in the bladder and gonorrhoea. The fruit is eaten in Punjab and Sind and is delicious.
A small shrub, c. 2-3 m tall. Stem with ash-grey bark, young twigs covered with dense fine stellate tomentum. Leaves with 1-2.5 cm long, filiform, densely stellate hairy petiole; lamina rugose above, densely soft hairy beneath, ovate to broadly ovate or narrowly to broadly orbicular or somewhat oblate, 1.4-7 cm long, 1.4-7.5 cm broad, 5-costate, basal 2 nerves somewhat indistinct, subcordate to cordate at the base, margin scalloped (crenate-serrate), each serrature with bunch of long hairs, apex obtuse-apiculate, rarely emarginate; stipules foliaceous, ovate-oblong, c. 1 cm long, densely villous outside. Cyme 4(-6)-flowered, umbellate, peduncles axillary, rarely leaf-opposed, 0.8-1.5 cm long, densely villous. Flowers whitish-yellow, c. 2 cm across; pedicel 5-8 mm long; bracts elliptic-lanceolate, c. 7-8 mm long, stellate tomentose on both sides. Sepals oblanceolate, 8-10 mm long, c. 2.5 mm broad, villous outside, acute. Petals narrowly obovate, claw minute with indistinct pit, densely ciliate around gland, limb c. 5 mm long, c. 2 mm wide, dull yellow, emarginate to retuse. Stamens 25-30, filaments c. 5 mm long. Ovary globose, densely covered with antrorse hairs; style c. 3-4 mm long, stellate hairy, stigma 4-lobed. Drupe dorsoventrally somewhat compressed, unlobed, subglobose, c. 1 cm in diameter, c. 8 mm long, cordate at the base, densely villous, yellow-brown or coppery red.
Grewia villosa is a shrub, often scrambling and hardly exceeding 4 m in height. Leaves are fairly large, serrated and heart-shaped. It grows naturally, mainly in dry habitats. It is common in most of the semi-arid parts of Eastern Africa but may now be rare in parts of its natural distribution. It can be seen in Ein Gedi oasis in Israel, and in South Africa, where it is common. Its ripe copper-coloured fruits are eaten in East Africa.
The fruit of the Grewia villosa were eaten both while immature and green and also once they had ripened and hardened to a dark, reddish-brown. The bark was stripped off and crushed in water or chewed to a pulp which was used to wash the body as well as to clean the hair and disinfect the scalp [3]
Grewia villosa is a shrub, often scrambling and hardly exceeding 4 m in height. Leaves are fairly large, serrated and heart-shaped. It grows naturally, mainly in dry habitats. It is common in most of the semi-arid parts of Eastern Africa but may now be rare in parts of its natural distribution. It can be seen in Ein Gedi oasis in Israel, and in South Africa, where it is common. Its ripe copper-coloured fruits are eaten in East Africa.
