Bogo
Garuga pinnata · Garuga
- Names in the book
- Bugo, Tag.
- Used for
- Cough and asthma
- Colours
- flowercream, yellow
- Native range
- India to Indochina and southern China
- In the Philippines, per the book
- Everywhere in Luzon, Panay and Balabac.
- Family
- Burseraceae, filed in the book under Burseraceæ
- Printed as
- Garuga pinnata, Roxb. (G. Madagascarensis, DC.)
- Sources
- Page 72 on Project Gutenberg · Wikipedia
The Philippine bogo is now usually identified as Garuga floribunda.
The plant today
Garuga pinnata is a deciduous tree species from the family Burseraceae. It occurs in Asia: from the Indian sub-continent, southern China and Indo-China; in Vietnam it may be called dầu heo. No subspecies are listed in the Catalogue of Life.
Excerpt from “Garuga pinnata” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Recorded in the Philippines
GBIF holds no records of this plant from the Philippines.
Checked against GBIF occurrence records, October 2026.
What the 1901 book says
A historical record, quoted as printed. Doses and remedies here are not medical advice.
Uses
The fruit is slightly acid and edible. The trunk exudes an abundant gum, of the odor of turpentine, translucent, greenish-yellow, forming small masses slightly soluble in alcohol, soluble in water, with which a mucilage is formed. The juice of the leaves is used for asthma. The sap is used in Bombay to remove opacities of the cornea. There is another species in the Philippines, G. floribunda, Decsne (Icica Abilo, Blanco), abilo, Tag., the root of which furnishes a decoction used for phthisis. This species also produces a gum-resin similar to that of the bugo.
Botanical description
A tree, with leaves alternate, odd-pinnate, without stipules, bunched on the ends of the branches, with opposite, serrate leaflets. Flowers yellowish-white in panicles, compound, polygamous. Calyx bell-shaped, 5-toothed. Corolla, 5 petals. Stamens 10, free, in 2 series. Ovary inferior, 5-lobuled. Fruit, a globose, greenish-yellow drupe with numerous bony seeds.
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.
- Molecular dynamics directed neuroprotective activity of alcoholic extract of Garuga pinnata Roxb. in experimental rats
- Inspired by molecular dynamic simulation, exploring chemical constituents of alcoholic extract of Garuga pinnata computationally as inhibitors of GluN2B-containing NMDA receptors
- Antiproliferative, molecular docking, and bioavailability studies of diarylheptanoids isolated from stem bark of Garuga pinnata Rox B