Madagascar periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus)

Madagascar periwinkle or tapak dara (Catharanthus roseus L. G.Don) is an annual shrub that lives wild or cultivated in open places in various tropical regions, but can also grow in a rather shady place. Shrub habitus grows sideways and is 0.2 meters to 1 meter high.

This beautiful plant in Indonesia is called tapak dara, Malaysians know it as kemunting cina, in the Philippines as tsitsirika, in Vietnam as hoa hai dang, in China known as chang chun hua, in England as rose periwinkle, and in the Netherlands as a soldaten bloem.

C. roseus has a beautiful flower appearance and is similar to frangipani flowers, round and diameter shaped stems are small, branched, woody stems and downy leaves. Flowers have red, pink, blue, white and others.

These plants can live wildly on any land including clay, sand and rocks. It grows and spreads rapidly during the rainy season where the wake flowers bloom on dewy mornings. This flower plant bursts and appears to be striking between the surrounding grasses.

The leaves are ovoid, about 2 cm to 6 cm long, 1 cm to 3 cm wide, green, and pinned pinned together. The leaves are about 2-6 cm long, 1-3 cm wide. The stalk is very short and the leaves contain white latex.

Flowers grow axially or arise from the armpit of leaves, flower petals and nail-shaped. Trumpet shaped crowns, widened ends, white, blue, pink or purple depending on the cultivar. The fruit is cylindrical with a pointed tip, hairy, 1.5 cm to 2.5 cm long, and has many seeds.

Flowers and leaves contain vincristine, vinblastine, reserpine, ajmalicine, and serpentine. Other contents are catharanthine, leurosine, norharman, lochnerine, tetrahydroalstonine, vindoline, vindolinine, akuammine, vincamine, vinleurosin, and vinrosidine.

Kingdom: Plantae
Kingdom: Embryophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Asterids
Order: Gentianales
Family: Apocynaceae
Genus: Catharanthus
Species: C. roseus

Cogon grass (Imperata cylindrica)

Alang-alang or cogon grass ( Imperata cylindrica ) is a plant species in Poaceae, annual grass, sharp leaf, long buds and scaly, creeping under the ground, very adaptive and grows in all climates which often become weeds on agricultural land. I. cylindrica has a sharp pointed tip of the bud and emerges from the ground, height of 0.2-1.5 m but in other places it may be more, short stems, rising up to the ground and flowering white or purplish, often with wreath of hair under the segment. Leaf strands in the form of long ribbons, lancet-tipped with a narrow base and gutter-shaped, 12-80 cm long, very coarse edge and jagged sharply, long hair at the base with broad, pale leaf bones in the middle. The flowers are panicles, 6-28 cm long with long-haired and white-colored ears for 1 cm which are used as a tool to blow off the fruit when ripe. Cogon grass breeds quickly with seeds that spread quickly with the wind or through rhizomes that quickly penetrate the soil. Alang-alang does...

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