Pandan
Pandanus odorifer · Fragrant screwpine
The plant today
Pandanus odorifer is an aromatic monocot species of plant in the family Pandanaceae, native to South East Asia, the Andaman Islands, the Philippines, and is also found wild in southern India and Burma. It is commonly known as fragrant screw-pine.
Excerpt from “Pandanus odorifer” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Recorded in the Philippines
GBIF holds 137 records of this plant from the Philippines. The ones with map coordinates fall in 18 provinces, most often Batanes (4), Cebu (4), Palawan (4), Davao Oriental (2), Isabela (2), Negros Oriental (2), Nueva Ecija (2), Pangasinan (2), and 10 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 1985 book uses it for
A record of home remedies from 1985, with the book's amounts and doses reworded. It is not medical advice.
- Acute and chronic cystitisLeaf decoction, drunk.Boil 1 cup of chopped fresh leaves in 2 glasses of water for 15 minutes. Adults take 1 cup three times a day. Children three times a day: ages 2 to 6 a quarter cup, ages 7 to 12 half a cup.Page 13
The book prints Pandanus odoratissimus, now Pandanus odorifer, the tall seashore screwpine. The Tagalog name pandan-mabango is today used for the small kitchen pandan, Pandanus amaryllifolius, and that may be the plant the author had in mind. The Tagalog line of the caption is partly lost in the scan.
Summarised from Herminia de Guzman-Ladion, Healing Wonders of Herbs (Manila: Philippine Publishing House, 1985), where this plant is shown as “Pandan” on page 118. The book is in copyright, so its wording and photographs are not reproduced. Amounts are the book's, restated.
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.
- Computational screening and biochemical analysis of Pistacia integerrima and Pandanus odorifer plants to find effective inhibitors against Receptor-Binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein of SARS-Cov-2
- Phytochemical screening, molecular docking, antifertility investigations, and ADME potential of various extracts of Pandanus odoratissimus leaves
- Antiglycation and Amyloid-β Inhibitory Activities of Pandanus odorifer Extracts and Isolated Constituents: In Vitro and Molecular Docking Insights