ALIMPAI
CROTON CAUDATUS Geisel.
Local name: Alimpai (Tag.).
Alimpai is found only in Benguet, Pangasinan and Rizal Provinces in Luzon, and in Palawan, in thickets and ravines at low altitudes, ascending to 400 meters. It is also reported form India to Southern China and southward to Sumatra, Java, Christmas Islands, and Borneo.
This plant is a straggling, climbing shrub. The leaves are extremely variable, the smaller ones being ovate-cordate and 2.5 to 7.5 centimeters long and the larger ones, orbicular-cordate and 10 to 18 centimeters long. The margin is coarsely toothed and often has a gland at the sinus or else in the teeth. The racemes are very long, slender, 10 to 18 centimeters long solitary and terminal. The male flowers are hairy, with sepals and petals of equal length. In the female the sepals are ovate or oblong and the petals are very minute, subulate and long ciliate. The fruit (capsule) is woody nearly spherical or broadly oblong, 2 to 2.5 centimeters long, terete or with 6 slender ridges. The seeds are unusually variable most often dorsally compressed and slightly rugose.
Kirtikar and Basu, Chopra and Caius state that the leaves are applied as a poultice to sprains.
Burkill and Haniff report that the leaves may be used for poulticing during fevers. Caius says that in Lakhimpur the young leaf buds are powdered with the leaves Caesalpinia sappan and used for liver diseases.
Burkill and Haniff continue that a decoction of the root causes purging and so ifs administered for constipation; and, as purging may help fevers, it is used for them also. Colds are similarly treated
Source:BPI