Tinta-tintahan
Phyllanthus reticulatus · Black-honey shrub
- Names in the book
- Tinatinaan, Tintatintahan, Malinta, Tag.; Sug̃ot-olag̃, Vis.
- Used for
- Mouth, teeth and throatUrinary
- Colours
- flowerred, greenfruitpurple, black
- Native range
- Old World tropics
- In the Philippines, per the book
- Grows everywhere and is well known.
- Family
- Phyllanthaceae, filed in the book under Euphorbiaceæ
- Printed as
- Phyllanthus reticulatus, Müll. (Cica decandra, Blanco.)
- Sources
- Page 214 on Project Gutenberg · Wikipedia
The plant today
Phyllanthus reticulatus is a plant species described Jean Louis Marie Poiret; it is included in the family Phyllanthaceae. The species is native to tropical Asia, New Guinea, northern Australia, and the Solomon and Santa Cruz Islands. It has been introduced to Jamaica. It has been confused with P. polyspermus. In Vietnamese its name is phèn đen (sometimes diệp hạ châu mạng). It is also found in Northern Australia, where the aborigines of the Moyle River area use the wood for firesticks and call it mirrinymirriny.
Excerpt from “Phyllanthus reticulatus” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Recorded in the Philippines
GBIF holds 152 records of this plant from the Philippines. The ones with map coordinates fall in 24 provinces, most often Quezon (5), Bulacan (3), Metropolitan Manila (3), Bataan (2), Batangas (2), Benguet (2), Biliran (2), Cagayan (2), and 16 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 natives eat the little berries of this species, which are dark purple before and black after maturity, and use their juice for ink. The leaves are diuretic and refreshing; the bark alterant. In the bazaars of India the bark is sold commonly in pieces 1° long and as thick as the wrist; its taste is slightly sweet, color dark and the alterative dose of its decoction is 120–150 grams a day. In Concan they make a compound pill of the leaf-juice, powdered cubebs and camphor, to be dissolved in the mouth for ulcerated, bleeding or scorbutic gums. The juice is also given internally for urticaria.
Botanical description
Small trees, 12° or more high, with leaves pinnate, oval, entire, alternate, glabrous, downy when young. Common petiole, 2 stipules at the base. Flowers monœcious. Staminate: calyx, 5 colored sepals; no corolla; filaments 4, coarse, somewhat shorter than the calyx, the middle one thicker and 2-parted; anthers 10, 4 on the middle filament and two on each of the others. Pistillate: calyx and corolla same as staminate; nectary, 5 glandules on the base of the ovary. Fruit, a black berry seated within the calyx, crowned with 2 erect styles, 6 or 8 compartments each with a single 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.
- Construction, characterization and application of locust bean gum/Phyllanthus reticulatus anthocyanin - based plasmonic silver nanocomposite for sensitive detection of ferrous ions
- Network pharmacology identification and in Vivo validation of key pharmacological pathways of Phyllanthus reticulatus (Euphorbiaceae) leaf extract in liver cancer treatment
- Design and development of locust bean gum-endowed/Phyllanthus reticulatus anthocyanin- functionalized biogenic gold nanosystem for enhanced antioxidative and anticancer chemotherapy