''Decalepis hamiltonii'' is a species of plant in the family
Apocynaceae
Apocynaceae (from ''Apocynum'', Greek for "dog-away") is a family of flowering plants that includes trees, shrubs, herbs, stem succulents, and vines, commonly known as the dogbane family, because some taxa were used as dog poison Members of ...
.
It is endemic to
Peninsular India and known by its names of maredu kommulu, nannari kommulu or madina kommulu in
Telugu
Telugu may refer to:
* Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India
*Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India
* Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language
** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode
S ...
, makali beru or vagani beru in
Kannada
Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...
and magali kizhangu in
Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
* Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia
**Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils
**Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia
* Tamil language, nativ ...
is a plant whose root is used in
Ayurvedic medicines and for use in pickles and to make
sharbat
Sharbat ( fa, شربت, ; also transliterated as ''shorbot'', ''šerbet'' or ''sherbet'') is a drink prepared from fruit or flower petals. It is a sweet cordial, and usually served chilled. It can be served in concentrated form and eaten with ...
.
The English name of swallowroot is sometimes used for the plant and studies have shown that it has insecticidal activity and a potential use in control of stored grain pests. The active ingredient in the root was synthesized and encapsulated with beta-cyclodextrins. The roots were also subjected to supercritical carbon-dioxide based extraction at the Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysore, India.
The plant is often confused with ''Hemidesmus indicus'', Indian sarsaparilla
The root contains
antioxidants and extraction methods for it have been patented.
The popularity of ''Decalepis'' in the international market has recently made its price soar and sends worrying signals about it getting being endangered due to over-exploitation.
Health drink plant Nannari faces extinction
/ref>
References
Periplocoideae
{{Apocynaceae-stub