Guntapay
Alangium salviifolium · Sage-leaved alangium
- Names in the book
- The book records no Philippine name for this plant.
- Names from other sources
- Guntapay, Tagalog. Listed by StuartXchange and PROSEA.
- Colours
- flowerwhite, creamfruitred, black
- Native range
- India through Southeast Asia; East Africa
- In the Philippines, per the book
- The mountains of San Mateo.
- Family
- Cornaceae, filed in the book under Cornaceæ
- Printed as
- Alangium Lamarkii, Thwaites. (A. decapetalum, hexapetalum and tomentosum, Lam.)
- Sources
- Page 138 on Project Gutenberg · Wikipedia
The plant today
Alangium salviifolium, commonly known as sage-leaved alangium, is a flowering plant in the Cornaceae family. It is also commonly known as udugu chettu in Telugu, Ankolam in Malayalam, Ankola in Kannada, Akola or Ankol in Hindi and Alanji in Tamil. In India, Its mostly found in dry regions in plains and low hills and also found on roadsides.
Excerpt from “Alangium salviifolium” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Recorded in the Philippines
GBIF holds 16 records of this plant from the Philippines.
Counts from GBIF occurrence records, October 2026. They include planted trees and garden plants, and a province with no records may only lack collectors.
What the 1901 book says
A historical record, quoted as printed. Doses and remedies here are not medical advice.
Uses
According to Mooden Sheriff, the root bark is an efficient emetic in doses of 3 grams. In smaller doses it is febrifuge and produces nausea. The bark is extremely bitter; its reputation in the treatment of skin diseases is undeserved. It is a good substitute for ipecac, having given good results in all conditions in which the latter is indicated, with the exception of dysentery.
The febrifuge dose is 0.35–0.60 gram; alterative, 0.15–0.30 gram.
It is furthermore prescribed in India for syphilis and leprosy and is one of the many remedies used for the bites of rabid animals. The bruised leaves are applied to the joints of rheumatic patients.
Botanical description
A tree 20–30 meters high, leaves alternate, persistent, petiolate, no stipules, oblong, dentate, acuminate, pinnately nerved. Flowers whitish, regular, hermaphrodite, in terminal cymes. Receptacle concave. Calyx short, 10-toothed. Corolla, 10 narrow, elongated ribbon-like petals. Stamens 30–40, filaments free and glabrous. Ovary inferior, held in the concavity of the receptacle, one-celled, with 1 seed, crowned by an epigynous disc, above which rises a simple style with dilated stigma. Fruit a globose drupe, crowned by the calyx, with 10 inconspicuous ribs. The putamen encloses an albuminous kernel.
Habitat
The mountains of San Mateo.
A ward or Barrio of Manila.
In the U. S. P. and P. G. Marsh Mallow is a synonym for Althæa officinalis, the root being the part of the plant which is used.
Journal de Phar. et de Chim., XX., p. 3811.
Daruty, loc. cit., p. xxvi.
Official in the U. S. P. under the name of Santalum rubrum, and used only for coloring alcoholic solutions.
Recent research
The most cited papers since 2022 that name this plant in the title, pulled from Europe PMC in October 2026. Titles are the authors' own and the findings have not been reviewed here.
- A novel hepatoprotective activity of Alangium salviifolium in mouse model
- Biofunctionalized zinc nanoparticles from Alangium salvifolium seeds extract: a potent antibacterial and anti-Cancer therapeutic agent
- Multi-technique comparative analysis of bioactive metabolites in Alangium salviifolium (L.f.) Wangerin leaf, fruit and seed extracts using UV-Vis, FTIR, HPLC, LCMS and cytotoxicity evaluation on A431 cell line