Nipay
Mucuna pruriens · Velvet bean
- Names in the book
- Nipay, Lipay, Vis.
- Used for
- ConstipationWorms
- Colours
- flowerpurplepodbrown
- Native range
- Tropical Asia and Africa
- In the Philippines, per the book
- Luzon and Panay.
- Family
- Fabaceae, filed in the book under Leguminosæ. (Papilionaceæ.)
- Printed as
- Mucuna pruriens, DC. (M. prurita, Hook.; M. utilis, Wall.; Dolichos pruriens, L.; Carpopogon pruriens, Roxb.)
- Sources
- Page 90 on Project Gutenberg · Wikipedia
The plant today
Mucuna pruriens is a tropical legume native to Africa and tropical Asia and widely naturalized and cultivated. Its English common names include monkey tamarind, velvet bean, Bengal velvet bean, Florida velvet bean, Mauritius velvet bean, Yokohama velvet bean, cowage, cowitch, lacuna bean, and Lyon bean. The plant is notorious for the extreme itchiness it produces on contact, particularly with the young foliage and the seed pods. It also produces many medium-sized red swollen bumps on the skin with the itching. It has agricultural and horticultural value, and is used in herbalism.
Excerpt from “Mucuna pruriens” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Recorded in the Philippines
GBIF holds 68 records of this plant from the Philippines. The ones with map coordinates fall in 12 provinces, most often Guimaras (3), Bohol (1), Bulacan (1), Catanduanes (1), Ifugao (1), Laguna (1), Metropolitan Manila (1), Occidental Mindoro (1), and 4 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 pods are official as an anthelmintic in the Pharmacopœia of India. They are used in the form of an electuary triturated to the proper consistency with honey or syrup. The dose for adults is one soupspoonful, and for children a teaspoonful, given every morning for 3–4 consecutive days. The last day a purge is given to expel the lumbricoids.
Botanical description
A vine with ternate leaves. Flowers red, keel larger than the standard and wings. Pods about as thick as the little finger, lacking transverse grooves, curved in the form of the letter f, covered with bright red down, which causes an unendurable itching. They are divided into 3 or 4 oblique cells each containing a brown, shiny seed.
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.
- Protective effects of Thai Mucuna pruriens (L.) DC. var. pruriens seeds on sexual behaviors and essential reproductive markers in chronic unpredictable mild stress mice
- Mucuna pruriens Seed Aqueous Extract Improved Neuroprotective and Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitory Effects Compared with Synthetic L-Dopa
- Neuroprotection by Mucuna pruriens in Neurodegenerative Diseases