Centella Asiatica

Centella grows in temperate and tropical swampy areas in many regions of the world. It is native to tropical regions of Africa, Asia, Australia, and islands in the western Pacific Ocean. The stems are slender, creeping stolons, green to reddish-green in color. The flowers are white or crimson in color. The crop matures in three months, and the whole plant, including the roots, is harvested manually.

The plant contains pentacyclic triterpenoids and their trisaccharide glycosides. Among them are asiatic acid and brahmic acid (madecassic acid) with their derivatives asiaticoside and brahmoside (madecassoside). Approximately 124 chemical compounds have been isolated and identified from Centella asiatica.

Distilling 85 g of dry leaves for 4 hours gave a 0.05% yield of an essential oil of 33 compounds. That oil was rich in sesquiterpene hydrocarbons (74.1%), and its most abundant compounds were β-farnesene (26.5%), α-humulene (20.9%) and β-caryophyllene (13.3%).

The plant is consumed as a culinary vegetable and is used in traditional medicine. In Sri Lankan cuisine it is used as a leafy green, where it is called gotu kola or vallaarai. It has been used as a medicine in the Ayurvedic tradition of India for thousands of years. In traditional medicine it has been used with the intent to treat various disorders, dermatological conditions and minor wounds, although clinical efficacy and safety have not been proven in clinical research.

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