Culantro (Eryngium foetidum)

Walangan or culantro (Eryngium foetidum) is a plant species in Apiaceae, biennial herb, upright stem, 15-45 cm high, sturdy, green, grows well in waste places, cultivation areas, along roadsides and is considered a troublesome weed by the thorny leaves.

E. foetidum has rosulus and cauline leaves, lancet to oblong blades, up to 30 cm long, up to 5 cm wide, wrinkled to spinuloseserrate, sharp, a bone in the center, dark green and shiny.

The inflorescences are multi-head and cylindrical, 10x5 mm, lanceolate involucral bracts, exceed the head and are usually 2-3 cm long. The petals are white or greenish. The fruit is greenish, subglobose and 1.5 mm in diameter.

Culantro is widely used in seasoning and marination. The plant dries well, retains good color and taste so it is valuable in the dry herb industry. It is sometimes used as a substitute for cilantro, but has a stronger taste.

Walangan has been used in traditional medicine for burns, earaches, fever, hypertension, constipation, fits, asthma, stomach pain, intestinal worms, complications of infertility, snake bites, diarrhea, and malaria.

Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Tracheophyta
Subphylum: Angiospermae
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order: Apiales
Family: Apiaceae
Subfamily: Saniculoideae
Tribe: Saniculeae
Genus: Eryngium
Species: Eryngium foetidum

Laniger bat tick (Ixodes lanigeri), new hard tick species (Ixodidae) from mouse-eared bats (Myotis) in Vietnam

NEWS - Researchers have identified Ixodes ticks from Vietnam based on morphological and molecular characteristics of females, nymphs and larvae as a new species, laniger bat tick ( Ixodes lanigeri ), which like other members of the Ixodes ariadnae complex appears to show a preference for vesper bats as a typical host. Historically, for more than a century and a half, only one species has been called the “long-legged bat tick”: Ixodes vespertilionis Koch. However, over the past decade, it has been molecularly recognized that long-legged ixodid ticks associated with bats may represent at least six species. Host associations and geographic separation may explain the evolutionary divergence of the new species from its closest living relative Murina hilgendorfi Peters in East Asia, Japan, as no Myotis or Murina spp. have overlapping distributions between Vietnam and the Japanese mainland. On the other hand, assuming that I. lanigeri may be present in other myotine bats and knowing that s...

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Kemadih (Schultesianthus coriaceus)

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