Lipa
Dendrocnide meyeniana · Poisonous wood nettle
- Names in the book
- Lig̃aton, Lipa, Apariagua (?), Tag., Vis.; Lipag̃doton, Pam.
- Used for
- Mouth, teeth and throatStomach and digestionSkinWounds, burns and boilsJoint pain, sprains and swellingBites and stings
- Colours
- flowergreenish-white, pink
- Native range
- Philippines and Taiwan
- In the Philippines, per the book
- Very common in all the fields and in the mountains. Blooms in June.
- Family
- Urticaceae, filed in the book under Urticaceæ
- Printed as
- Laportea gaudichaudiana, Wedd. (Urtica umbellata, U. ferox, Blanco.)
- Sources
- Page 224 on Project Gutenberg · Wikipedia
Laportea gaudichaudiana, the name printed in the book, is a synonym of Dendrocnide meyeniana.
The plant today
Dendrocnide meyeniana, the poisonous wood nettle, is a species of tree in the family Urticaceae, native to the thickets and secondary forests of Taiwan and the Philippines. The specific epithet meyeniana honors Franz Meyen, who collected the type specimen in Manila during his world cruise. In the Philippines, the city of Lipa in Batangas is named after this plant. Locals distinguish it primarily by the short stinging hairs on its twigs. In Taiwanese Mandarin, it is widely known as yǎoréngǒu ("biting dog"), a name which has been used since the early Qing period referring to the skin irritation or inflammation its stinging hairs may cause.
Excerpt from “Dendrocnide meyeniana” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Recorded in the Philippines
GBIF holds 178 records of this plant from the Philippines. The ones with map coordinates fall in 20 provinces, most often Guimaras (9), Zamboanga del Sur (7), Batanes (6), Laguna (4), Agusan del Norte (2), Leyte (2), Oriental Mindoro (2), Sorsogon (2), and 12 more.
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
The Padre Mercado writes as follows concerning the properties of this plant: “The leaves, applied with salt in the form of a plaster, purify dog bites, foul, putrid, malignant and cankerous ulcers; they cure boils, contusions and all abscesses; mixed with wax they may be applied for obstruction of the spleen; mashed with the juice and inserted in the nose they arrest nose-bleed; cooked with snails they soften the stomach, excite the secretion of urine and dissipate flatus; the juice given as a gargle aborts inflammation of the epiglottis. The seeds mixed with wine are a sexual excitant and “clear out” the womb; taken with syrup they relieve dyspnœa, pain in the side and inflammation of the lungs and force up the humors from the chest; it may be mixed with medicines that corrupt the flesh (sic). The grated root drunk with wine relieves painful flatulence. I myself (continues the Padre Mercado) have experimented with a woman who suffered with painful flatulence and this remedy relieved her.”
We repeat that all the foregoing is copied from the writings of Padre Mercado and we offer it as a therapeutic curiosity.
P. Blanco states that merely to touch the leaves causes an intolerable itching.
Botanical description
A small tree, 12–15° high, trunk richly branched. Leaves opposite, bunched at the ends of the branches, notched at the base, long, ovate, serrate, hairy on both surfaces. Flowers yellowish-white, diœcious. Staminate: In compound racemes; calyx 4 parts; corolla none; stamens 4, inserted on the base of the calyx. Pistillate: Flowers in 2-forked umbel, flat, very large; calyx, none; stamens none; stigma 1; seed heart-shaped.
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.
- Anticancer potential of Dendrocnide meyeniana through phytochemical profiling, ADMET analysis, molecular docking, and in silico cytotoxicity evaluation
- Dermatitis and prolonged dysesthesia from the poisonous wood nettle, Dendrocnide meyeniana (Urticaceae)