Description

Purging croton , known as Croton tiglium , is a plant species in the family Euphorbiaceae. C. tiglium is also called jamaal gota in India. Crotons with their colorful, glossy foliage and variation of leaf types are popular plants. It is a native of the tropics from Java to Australia and the South Sea Islands. In the wild, garden croton is an evergreen shrub that grows to 10 ft tall and has large, leathery, shiny leaves. The cultivated garden crotons are usually smaller and come in an amazing diversity of leaf shapes and colors. What they do have in common are rather thick evergreen alternate leaves, tiny inconspicuous star-shaped yellow flowers that hang down in long racemes, and a milky sap that bleeds from cut stems. Depending on the cultivar, the leaves may be ovate to linear, entire to deeply lobed, and variegated with green, white, purple, orange, yellow, red or pink. The colors may follow the veins, the margins or they may be in blotches on the leaf.

Characteristics:

Large shrub, upto 7 m high, stem stellate-hairy at young, green, glabrous at maturity; leaves alternate, lamina ovate-elliptic, 9.5-13.5 x 5-7.5 cm, papery, glabrous, margins serrulate or sub entire, with small glands, base rounded, with 2 distinct glands, apex acuminate, basal veins 3, petioled, 3.8-5.3 cm long, ca. 0.1 cm diameter, matured leaves become red; flowers terminal and axillary; male flowers: 0.7 x 0.7 cm, pedicelled, ca. 0.6 cm long, 0.1 cm diameter; sepals 5, yellowish, 0.4 cm long; petals 5, white, membranous, pubescent, 0.2 cm long; stamens 14-15, filament 0.35 cm long; anther bilobed, ca. 0.08 x 0.08 cm; female flowers: ca. 0.9 x 0.9 cm, pedicelled, ca. 0.5 cm long, calyx 5, green, 0.5 cm long; ovary hairy at base, 0.4 x 0.25 cm ; style 3, rarely 4, bipartite, horizontal, connate at base, 0.3-0.4 cm long; fruits trilobed, subglobose, glabrescent, ca. 2.3 x ca. 1.6 cm , pedicelled, ca. 0.8 cm long, 0.1 cm diameter; seeds ovate, subglobose, 1.1 x 0.7 cm , smooth, brown on maturity.

Medicinal Uses:

Purging croton is a plant. The oil from the seeds is used to make medicine. Despite serious safety concerns, people take croton seeds for emptying and cleansing the stomach and intestines. They also take croton seeds to treat gallbladder problems, colic, blocked intestines, and malaria.