Khai Mangkorn......?

[Ned]

Is anyone out there familiar with a bushy plant known here in the north as khai mangkorn (as in dragon......but not to be confused with dragonfruit.)

The mother in law of a farang here had been eating a lot of it for high blood pressure but ate too much and ended up at the clinic with bp of less than 100 and dizzy spells.

It's a small bush and the leaves can be eaten like salad leaves. I think I'm going to have to take a sample of the plant to a botanist and get its latin name.

[cathyy]

The latin name would be most helpful. Quite a lot of current medications are synthetic versions of plant extracts, the synthetic versions being preferable because potency can be standardized and controlled. For example, digitalis is from the foxglove plant, and was used to treat dropsy. Now we use digoxin, synthetic digitalis, to treat the same disease, but call it congestive heart failure.

Perhaps the medicinal quality of this plant is already known and a med made from it. Perhaps not.